The Last Glass Ceiling
by Kurt
Summary: Tom Paris must discover he is capable of more than he thinks when he reveals a crewmember's secret.
1. Chapter 1

_Author's note: _

_Well, 'Way of the Officer' has been sidelined. Not by choice; by writer's block. And two children with ear infections. So on to this: an attempt to jump-start one story by working on another which has seized control of my creative faculties. It's worked in the past. _

_This story does include an OC, and it's not intended to be a Mary Sue fic – give me a shred of time before pulling out the Kathryn Janeway Commemorative Edition phaser rifles, okay? Tis Thomas Eugene Paris who headlines this fic. But on with the show..._

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_Lieutenant Paris's personal log: _

_The past couple of weeks have been interesting. We're running low on dilithium, but we've found a planet not too far away that has a pretty good load of it. A class-M planet, with an atmosphere, and sunshine, and everything. Which is great, because the idea of another three-week-long trip in a shuttle with Harry, Neelix, and Chakotay is...not an experience I care to repeat. B'Elanna's going to be on the away team, and so is Harry, which is going to be a pain because they'll be off the ship and I'll be down in sickbay helping out the doc. Not my idea of a fun couple of weeks. _

_In other news, Captain Janeway has decided to officially promote a bridge science officer. Back when we were pulled into the Delta Quadrant, most of the senior science people were killed, leaving only a bunch of greenhorn ensigns. It's weird; we didn't have a regular bridge science officer among the command crew all these years, and here I never even noticed. Anyway, she's narrowed down her choices to Ensigns Collins or Kessel. So for the past few weeks, we've had eager, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed young ensigns working the science station. They've been spending the past few years in the labs on the lower decks. _

_Collins is a really tall and skinny guy who sort of looks like Frankenstein's monster. Kessel would be easier to look at, that's for sure. Harry wants her to get it, and I can understand why. She's kind of cute. A lot better to look at than Collins, if I dare say so. She's really quiet and withdrawn, though, like she's terrified of the lot of us. Now, admittedly, fear and terror of Captain Janeway is probably a very wise, sound course to take for an ensign, but come on, how intimidating can Harry be? _

_I wish him luck, though. They'll be off on the away mission together. It would be nice to see him with somebody. Of course, it'll just make it that much worse for me, stuck in sickbay, but--," _

"Excuse me?" B'Elanna Torres said from behind him. "What was that? _Kind...of...cute?" _

Tom Paris cleared his throat and thought fast. "And, of course, my dearly beloved, brilliant, beautiful wife will be on the away team, down on the planet's surface, leaving me to pine away of loneliness, and...uh...heh...computer, pause log entry."

He turned slowly, already suspecting the anger was feigned. At least he hoped so. They weren't going to see each other for a while. He didn't want their last contact to be a quarrel.

"What is this universe coming to?" he asked quizzically. "Where a loyal, loving husband about to be separated from his beautiful wife is subject to suspicion over a mere moment's observation in a log entry?"

"Ha," she said. "Expressing desire not to be in a shuttle with your fellow officers. Suggesting that younger officers should fear the captain. And to top it off...suggesting that one of the candidates for the new science officer spot looks like Frankenstein...and the other is..._kind of cute." _She shook her head ruefully. "I don't know about you, Tom Paris."

"What I have always loved about you," Paris averred, "is your patience and forgiving ways. And how you know not to take statements out of context. Have I ever told you that?"

B'Elanna snorted. No, she wasn't really angry. If nothing else, he had learned to tell the difference.

"For example," he continued, "I'm sure you realize that my interest in Ensign Kessel is merely for Harry's sake."

She chuckled. "Harry?"

"Sure, why not?" he said. "Poor guy hasn't had a lot of luck with women. It's going to take a certain kind for him, I think. Kessel's new to the bridge, they're about the same age...and, well...you know...," he trailed off.

"You know, _what?" _she pressed. He grinned. Nothing was coming easily today.

"Well, Harry's sort of...foursquare, and Kessel's a quiet little biologist, so maybe they'd hit it off," he said. "She's on the away team. I saw the roster."

B'Elanna let out a _hmmph. _"She'll probably want to do weird experiments on him," she said. "Take out his liver or something."

Paris chuckled.. "See? _Just _like you're always threatening to do to me."

She shook her head again. "So what's the big idea with trying to hook Harry up with her, anyway?"

He shrugged. They could joke all they liked together. This was a little more serious. "Well," he said. "Harry's my friend, that's all. He's a good guy, he's stuck by me, and he has awful luck with the ladies. Maybe all he needs is a push.. She's not a hologram, an ex-Borg, or an alien. Oh, and she's not dead. So...," he spread his hands. "I just want to see him happy."

She grinned and nodded slowly. "You _are _loyal," she admitted. "Though you've got some low standards there – not Borg, not alien, not dead."

"Well," he said. "You know, Harry's got...a certain kind of appeal. He's more reliable than exciting, and you know...he may need somebody...like him."

She smiled conspiratorially. "He's a geek and he needs another geek."

Paris looked wounded. "Harry's not a _geek," _he protested.

"He is, but in a good way," Torres said. "But you're right, I think. He always goes for women he can't possibly have. But you can't choose _for _him, you know."

"I know," Paris allowed. "Still, you're going on this away mission. As second-in-command, no less." He gave her a knowing wink. "You could order them to go do something together. You know...get to know each other."

B'Elanna gave him a wide-eyed, mocking-thoughful look. "Now _there's _an idea! But wait, I can do better! I could sabotage their shuttle so that they end up all alone together. And I could fire a polaron burst over the shuttle so we couldn't beam them out for a few hours."

"Well, that's a _little _extreme," he allowed. She ignored him, going on.

"And I could use up this week's replicator credits and replicate a big hairy monster suit with fake claws and teeth, and then I could run around the shuttle and growl at it so she gets scared and jumps in his arms," B'Elanna continued sarcastically. "And then we could give Harry a sword and he could pretend to stab me to death and Kessel would swoon in his arms and say 'My Hero'. I'm sure Chakotay and the captain will have _no _problem with that. Who needs dilithium, anyway? We have junior officers to hook up with each other."

"You've been watching too many of my monster movies," he grumbled.

"Me? Never," B'Elanna deadpanned. "It's nice you're trying to look out for Harry, but he's not a teenager and you're not his big brother. Now look. We need dilithium, and _that _is what this away mission is all about. Now let's get something to eat. I have to be in transporter room one in an hour."

Tom chuckled. "Boy," he said. "Try to do a friend a favor, and here I am, cruelly mocked."

B'Elanna shrugged. "The universe is cruel," she said. "C'mon. Let's move out."

The mess hall wasn't too busy at this early hour of the morning. Even so, Neelix was up and bustling about his kitchen. He greeted them effusively as they entered. Paris wondered, not for the first time, how the Talaxian could manage to be so peppy in the morning. It just wasn't natural. His toast, eggs, and coffee took only a moment to replicate. He accompanied B'Elanna to a seat and had a long pull at his coffee. No wonder Captain Janeway lived by the stuff.

Harry Kim entered a moment later, and Tom waved him over. The younger man nodded and took a seat next to him. He grinned broadly.

"Ready for the away team?" he asked.

_Everyone's so cheerful, _Tom thought. "I'm not on it," he said. "While you guys get to play on the planet's surface, I get to play Igor for our resident mad doctor."

"We'll figure out a way to get you down there," Harry said agreeably. "In the meantime, fetch those brains."

Tom chuckled, but found himself feeling empty inside. Did they _have _to take his wife _and _his best friend? The next two weeks were going to be tough. Knowing that this was the last hour he would have with them for a while was depressing. He'd get through it, but it would be pretty gray and joyless on this ship for a while.

The mess hall doors opened to admit a short woman in a teal-over-black sciences uniform. Harry perked up and waved her over. Tom glanced at her for only a moment, not wanting to set B'Elanna off. All the same, his friend's reaction told him he'd been on the right track.

"Hi," Harry said when she arrived. Tom bit his lip. _Whatever you do, Harry, don't smile like a goof. _

He took a moment for a sidelong glance at the young woman. Erika Kessel _was_ kind of cute. She had black hair, twisted up into a chignon, and green eyes. All that time in the lab had left her a little too pale for his tastes, but it set off her hair nicely. It didn't seem to bother Harry too much.

"Morning, Kessel," Harry said.

Kessel glanced at each of them furtively in turn, as if fearing that the senior officers might leap across the table and attack her. She fidgeted visibly. "Good morning, Ensign Kim," she said, her tone a little distant. "Lieutenant Paris, Lieutenant Torres."

"Morning," Torres said. "Now what do they have you doing on the away team?"

Kessel flinched away just a bit as if uncomfortable. "Scanning for life forms," she said shortly.

"I didn't think there were any on this planet," Harry said.

"No _sentient _life forms," Kessel informed him. "Scans showed typical Class-M animal life. Insects, sea life, and mammals, but no signs of sentient life."

Harry nodded. "Anything that might become sentient life?"

_Not bad, Harry. Show some interest, but just don't make it too obvious. Just ease off a bit and play it cool._ She watched him carefully, almost distrustfully.

"There are monkeys," she said warily. He could hear an accent in her voice, now that he'd actually heard her string a few sentences together. It was very faint, but it was there. Her consonants were just a little harsher and her vowels just a micron different from the usual: _Tsair are mahngkees._ It made him think of Marseilles. It wasn't a French accent, though. With that last name, he would guess German.

"But we're talking dumb monkeys, right?" Paris joked. "They're not going to ambush the away team, are they?"

Kessel eyed him with that same distance for a moment. Was she nervous? Just frosty by nature? It was hard to tell. She didn't talk a lot when she'd worked the bridge science station.

"There are no signs of sentience," she said. "No signs of building permanent homes, growing food...the sensors would have picked up any of that. The landing site is fifteen hundred kilometers away from them, so it does not matter."

"Ah, good," he said. "A monkey-free away mission is a good away mission, I always say."

That got a smile out of her – a smile so brief he only could have verified it with a tricorder, but a smile nonetheless. Well, that was a good sign.

"Now, is this your first away mission?" B'Elanna asked. Her tone was friendly. She glanced briefly from Kessel to Harry and back again, nodding slowly as if she could see them as a pair. _Yeah, B'Elanna, that's it. Just help the guy out a little, will ya? _Tom thought.

Another brief smile. "Not my first," Kessel said. "I don't usually go on away missions. Only when there's a need for a biologist."

B'Elanna nodded. "Collins isn't going," she said. "You might be getting a leg up for the bridge science officer spot."

Kessel smiled again, a bit more tensely. "Perhaps," she said. "It's up to the captain."

"Be thorough. Captain Janeway likes thorough." B'Elanna advised. "Ensign Kim knows a lot about away team protocols. He's an old hand. He's been on more away teams than anyone else on the roster, including me."

_Yes! _Tom thought. _I knew I could count on you._ Harry merely smiled.

The combadge interrupted any further conversation. "Chakotay to away team. Please assemble in transporter room one in five minutes."

Torres tapped her own. "On my way. Ensigns Kim and Kessel are with me." She glanced at the two ensigns. "Would you two mind going on ahead? I'd prefer a moment with Lieutenant Paris alone."

"Of course," Harry said, and rose. He shook hands with Tom. "Well, this is it, old buddy," he said. "Try not to let the doc work you too hard." Behind him, Kessel murmured a quick good-bye, and then they left the mess hall.

"See? Did I come through or what?" B'Elanna asked teasingly. Then her face fell. the light-heartedness of the early morning and the minor fun of trying to play matchmaker had come to an end, butting up against the hard fact that they weren't going to see each other for the next few weeks. Tom smiled and nodded.

"You did fine," he said. "I guess this is it for a while."

Her face tightened. "I'll try to make it back to the ship at some point," she said. "Or maybe you can come down to the planet. I'll comm you when I can."

"Okay," he said. "Take care of yourself."

"I will. You too." With a quick peck on the cheek – all she was willing to do in the mess hall – she slipped out and was gone. Tom sighed and stared down at his eggs. He didn't want them anymore, but forced down another few gluey mouthfuls. His combadge twittered.

"Sickbay to Lieutenant Paris," the EMH said. Paris could hear his glee even through the tinny combadge. "Please report to sickbay as soon as possible. These quarterly crew health reports won't file themselves, you know."

Paris exhaled sharply. "On my way," he responded. He got up, drank off the dregs of his coffee, and put his plate in the recycling bin. The mess hall doors opened at his approach. He trudged down to the turbolift, shoulders down, feeling gray and depressed. The turbolift car was empty, and he preferred it that way in a desultory way.

"Well," he said to himself, "at least it'll be a routine couple of weeks."

Much later, he would look back on that statement and laugh.


	2. Diabolical Space Mosquitoes

Sickbay was just about what he thought it would be: dull and boring. The doctor was handling the few medical cases that came in. Tom got the boring paperwork. It was tedious to the point of mind-numbing. Did they really need to file reports on each crewman's health every three months? Wouldn't it be obvious on a crew of only a hundred and fifty who was sick and who wasn't? Wasn't the EMH supposed to remember all this stuff, anyway? He was plugged into the computer, after all. It wasn't like he could forget much.

Then again, Tom reflected, maybe the EMH had given him this job just to torture him. It wasn't out of the realm of possibility. The sheer tedium of it was making his eyeballs hurt. Name. Rank. Chronic health conditions. Recent illnesses. Date of last vaccinations. Date of last physical. Over and over, until he thought his brain would melt. Argh. Maybe he'd have to head down to the holodeck when all was said and done. Then he realized that he'd even have to do Captain Proton alone, and it just wouldn't be as much fun. Perhaps Chaotica ought to use a Paperwork Ray instead of his usual death ray.

He sighed. _Voyager _was in orbit, and didn't need a pilot. Like it or lump it, he was stuck here. Had it really only been a few hours since breakfast? It seemed like weeks.

The overhead speaker beeped. "Kessel to _Voyager _sickbay," came the high-pitched voice of Ensign Kessel.

Paris glanced over at the doctor, who was treating a crewmember. He didn't want to bother the doc, and the opportunity to escape the mindless tedium of paperwork was quite welcome. The doctor gave him a brittle smile, which Paris judged to be license to take the comm, so he made his way to the console and answered the hail.

"Sickbay here," he said breezily. "What can I do for you?"

"I have some data to send up to the ship," Kessel replied. "Ensign Kim has been stung."

"Stung?" Paris said.

"Yes. By an insect. The tricorder scans are inconclusive. I have one of them in a sample jar, and I'm beaming it up now."

Paris blinked, trying to put it together. "All right," he said, not quite sure what she meant. A moment later, a clear jar sparkled into existence, containing a small black flying speck that buzzed angrily around the jar. He stared at it for a moment. Why was she bothering over this?

"You're telling me Harry got stung by a mosquito?" he said.

There were a few moments of silence. "Well, it's not an _Earth _mosquito, but it's similar – a flying insect with a proboscis." Her tone was somewhat pedantic and irked, as if mistaking a Delta Quadrant insect for Earth mosquitoes was a major blunder, committed by simpleminded non-scientists like himself.

The doctor strode over from his patient. "Mr. Paris," he said, "What I believe the ensign wants is a full scan of the insect."

"Yes," Kessel said instantly over the comm.

"Aren't you the biologist?" Paris asked.

"Yes, but the tricorders here indicate some foreign biological material in its body but I'm not sure what it is," she said. "The scanners in sickbay are higher resolution. You can get quicker results."

Paris still didn't quite understand. The doctor came over and gave him a cool look. "Mr. Paris, scan the insect. They serve as a carrier for many different types of diseases."

"Oh." Paris took the jar and stared at it. What was he supposed to do? Make the bug lie down on the biobed? "How does Harry feel?"

Harry's voice cut in on the comm. "I feel all right. Just a bump, like a mosquito bite."

"Everything on the medical tricorder checks out normal," Kessel put in.

Paris took the jar over to a table and got out a medical tricorder, hoping he'd be able to scan the thing. Kessel ought to be doing this; she knew what she was doing. Then again, he was trying to arrange for some alone time between those two, and Harry felt all right, and he didn't want to go back to the paperwork.

"Okay," Paris said, feeling more confident. "I'll scan your bug. For now, just give Harry some of the standard vaccine. It's in the medikit. That stuff ought to handle just about anything."

"Yes, sir," Kessel said.

An idea crossed his mind: a combadge trick B'Elanna had showed him once. It took a certain sequence of keys on his console before the computer cut the connection. If it worked, her combadge channel would stay on, and he'd be able to listen in on their conversation.

The console emitted a few alarmed beeps, and Tom waited. Had he been quick enough? He hoped so.

"I don't like the look of that one cell," Kessel said dubiously. "It might be a virus."

"I feel fine," Harry said agreeably. "It itches, that's all."

Tom grinned. He could hear the sounds of someone rummaging around for the medikit, and then the hiss of a hypospray. Over the comm, Harry grunted.

"I never get used to that," he said. "Especially right on the neck."

"We should keep an eye on you," Kessel said reflectively.

_Yeah, there you go, Harry! _Tom thought exultantly. There was a _wsssh _sound that he figured were shuttle doors. His wife's voice echoed over the comm. His lips twisted as the forcible reminder that he was up here and they were down there struck him again.

"So how is he?" B'Elanna asked.

"He seems to be all right," Kessel said. "Sickbay is investigating the insect. They said I should give him the standard vaccine, just in case."

"Okay," B'Elanna said. "Well, we ought to make sure. Harry, why don't you stay here and help Ensign Kessel scan for life forms."

_Atsa my girl, _Tom thought.

"Hmmm," B'Elanna added. "There's some weird activity on sensors...well, what do you know. Your combadge channel hadn't closed." He heard a brief beeping as she keyed something into a console. A stifled chuckle told him he'd been discovered. Then the comm went dead. Tom grinned sheepishly. He should have known she'd catch him.

A few minutes later, his own combadge buzzed. "Torres to Paris."

"Go ahead," he said. "Is there a problem, B'Elanna?"

"Ha," she said. "Quit listening in on us and scan your bug, Lieutenant Paris. We're handling Ensign Love Connection on the surface just fine. Oh, yes, and we're mining dilithium too. You know, the stuff that makes the ship go fast? I just thought I'd remind you of that."

"Yes, dear," Paris said, grinning. "How's it going?"

"It's fine. The dilithium is good quality, and it's not too hard to extract. We got lucky this time – _ouch, dammit! _Sorry. These mosquitoes are awful."

"I'll swat this one when I'm done with it," Paris informed her. "As punishment for what his compatriot put you through."

"That sounds fair," B'Elanna said.

"I miss you," he told her.

"I know. I miss you too." She cut the connection and went about her business, far away from him. He took a moment to sigh and turned his attention to the mosquito. It had stopped buzzing around and settled on the floor of its prison. It even _looked _like an Earth mosquito. Uglier, though.

"Wondering what to do with your new pet?" the doctor asked acerbically.

Paris gave the doctor a cool smile. "Actually, I was wondering what to name him," he cracked.

"Start off with a full bioscan. Concentrate on foreign bodies: germs, viruses, and the like," the doctor said.

Paris took the jar and placed it on a biobed, feeling sort of silly as the diagnostic palette closed over it. There were at least six inches of space between the palette and the top of the jar. Then again, he thought, they had once put a bioneural gel pack on a biobed, hadn't they?

The screen lit up, pouring data in. A computer graphic of the insect appeared on the display panel, and it was just as ugly even when magnified ten times. It had a long, thin snout and compound eyes, seeming to stare at him from the panel as if accusing him of being the author of all its misery.

Since this was the first time the insect had ever been entered into their database, it would take a while. For a moment he thought it might make a good Captain Proton serial. Queen of the Diabolical Space Mosquitoes. Perhaps Buster Kincaid could get the girl this time. That's what he was shooting for, wasn't it?

Paris stayed by the angered insect. It kept him away from the paperwork. He picked up a medical tricorder and scanned at it himself while the computer did its job. There was a fragment of human DNA in there. He stopped and focused on that. Yep, it was Harry's – a few blood cells that that the diabolical space mosquito was digesting. There was something else there, too, which must be what Kessel had been asking about. It looked like a virus to his layman's eyes, so he set the sensors to focus on that.

It was an odd-looking virus. He didn't think he'd ever seen one quite like this. He was concerned. When the doctor had finished treating the crewman he was with, Paris caught his attention.

"Hey, doc," he said. "Have a look at this."

The doctor frowned and came over. "Yes?" he asked irascibly.

"Look at this virus," Paris said. "I've never seen anything quite like it."

The doctor looked at the panel, studying it in silence for a few moments "That _is _an unusual structure," he said. "Perhaps Ensign Kim ought to return to the ship for an examination. I'll inform the captain."

Paris fought not to frown. The mission was important; after all, dilithium was vital to _Voyager's _operations. And he did want to see if Kessel and Kim hit it off. Still, the doctor was the chief medical officer, and for all his ability to be a colossal pain, he really did care about the crew. Paris tapped his combadge. "Paris to Kim."

There was no response except for an almost silent hiss of static from his combadge. He felt the first few tendrils of fear tickle his throat.

"Paris to Kim. Harry, respond."

Again, a few moments passed by, each heavy as lead. Paris worked his jaw and felt acid churn in his stomach.

"Paris to away team!"

A few minutes passed that he could have sworn were longer than his entire sentence in New Zealand. Tense silence ruled the sickbay. He looked up at the doctor. Sick, desperate realization roiled his frame and cast his face in stone.

Then Captain Janeway's voice came from the overhead speakers. "Bridge to sickbay. Prepare for incoming casualties. We've gotten an emergency comm from the away team. All members are down. We're beaming them directly to you. Get ready."


	3. Ethical Considerations

_Author's note: _

_Here we are, another chapter of this happy little tale. I can't address reviewers as I used to in author's notes, as per the new rules with review replies, so I'll just say thanks to everyone who has reviewed, and I'll reply individually where I can. The burning question of death by mosquito bites will be answered by former science officer Captain Janeway. _

Less than half an hour ago, he'd been grudgingly doing paperwork and bemoaning that as a fate. Fate was ironic; now he would have given anything to be back in that position. He was too busy to spend a lot of time thinking about it.

The six people on the away team materialized in sickbay – Chakotay, Torres, Kim, Kessel, and two other crew members he didn't recognize at first glance. He went to B'Elanna first, out of a sense of loyalty, and gasped. Her face was flushed deep red. Sick heat radiated from her body; she was more like a bank of coals in a Starfleet uniform than a living being. No tricorder was necessary to tell him something was seriously wrong. That was one nasty fever.

"B'Elanna," he said. Her eyes were glassy and rolled wetly towards him. They tried to focus, but slid away from him after a moment. She muttered something deep in her throat and slumped over. He struggled to get his arms under her. The heat coming off her was sickening; people weren't supposed to be that hot. One hand clutched at his uniform shirt for a moment before letting go and going limp. Her brow was bathed in sweat.

He staggered as he lifted her to the biobed. The probe to his medical tricorder skittered away from his fingers as he grabbed for it convulsively. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the doctor helping Kim to another biobed. Harry was in no better shape. His face was soaked in sweat and was an ugly, yellowish pale. His eyes stood out, dark rings under them, staring out deliriously at Paris. The doctor seized a hypospray and administered it, taking a moment to read the sensors over B'Elanna's biobed.

"Thirty cc's of provaline, Mr. Paris!" the doctor said urgently. Paris swallowed and looked for another hypospray. Fear made him clumsy; his hands were shaking and he could barely load the vial into the hypospray. His throat closed down. B'Elanna was pregnant. The thought of losing his wife and his daughter at one swoop was terrifying. And just this morning, she'd been joking with him.

Somehow, he managed to push his fear away and do his job, getting each member of the away team onto a biobed and getting treatment started. All of them had the same blazing fever and delirium. None of them responded to his questions or even seemed to recognize where they were. There were six patients and only himself and the doctor to treat them; pandemonium ruled sickbay.

It seemed to be all they could do just to keep the patients from getting any worse. According to the readings, Harry's fever had increased two entire degrees in just the short time he had been there. The provaline slowed it down for a while, but it lost its effect quickly.

"Doctor. Mr. Paris. _Report." _

He turned from B'Elanna's bedside to see Captain Janeway. She was standing by Chakotay's bed, one hand on her fallen first officer's face. Chakotay didn't seem to register her being there. The tattoo stood out starkly against his pale brow.

"The away team is sick. They all have high fevers and they're delirious. They beamed up a mosquito before...this happened," Paris began lamely. "There was a weird looking virus in the mosquito."

Janeway raised an eyebrow. "A mosquito?"

Paris's face twisted. "Well, a Delta Quadrant mosquito," he admitted. "Here." He held up the sample jar containing the insect. "I don't see how somebody could die of a mosquito bite, but...," he trailed off.

Janeway nodded slowly. "Mosquito bites won't kill you. The viruses they carry are another story," she said. "Dengue fever, West Nile virus– a whole host of them. It can get ugly. I've seen it before_." _

"You have?" the doctor asked.

"Yes," she said absently, studying Chakotay's readings. " I have some background in virology. On the _Al-Batani. _I had to help contain an outbreak of Tulian encephalitis on Bolephus III."

"We're a little shorthanded," Paris said. "We could use some help."

Janeway turned to look at him, her features set in stone. "Agreed," she said archly. "We'll need to quarantine the members of the away team. I want samples of this virus, and a full bioscan of each crewman. And of course, update me on any change in their condition." She tapped her combadge. "Janeway to bridge."

"Bridge here," Tuvok replied.

"Mr. Tuvok, you are to take command of _Voyager _until further notice. Brief me at the beginning of every shift. I also want every crewman with a medical rating of five or higher assigned to sickbay. I'll be in the biolab."

"Of course, captain," Tuvok said impassively.

_Wow, _Tom thought disjointedly, _good thing our captain has her mad-scientist side. _

The captain left sickbay for the biolab. After a few more rounds of treatment, the patients were stable. They were pumped full of sedatives and vaccines and anything that could do some good. The quarantine fields were in place. Everything that could have been done for them had been done.

It didn't help him as much as he thought it might have. Glancing at the chronometer, he was surprised to see that two hours had gone by. Now, all he could do was sit by his wife and his friend. Both of them were in a stupor of fever and sedatives. Their eyes stared up at the ceiling, dead and glassy, giving him the disturbing feeling that they were gone, leaving behind only their shells. Even though he could pull up the EEG of either one and see it wasn't that way, it gave him the creeps.

"Hang on, guys," he said, feeling his throat tighten.

The sound of a whispered conversation made him turn. Over on the other side of the sickbay, the EMH was bending over Ensign Kessel. Her eyes were open, and she was talking to the doc about something. That surprised him; what with the virus and the amount of drugs percolating through her bloodstream, she was lucky to be able to form syllables at all.

Still, maybe she could tell him something about what had happened. He got up and stopped for a moment, torn between his desire to see what she knew and the equally strong desire to stay by B'Elanna and Harry. Then he pressed on, glancing back as he made his way through the ward.

Kessel looked awful. The pasty white skin of a woman who had lived her life in the biolab had turned yellowish and even more pale. Her eyes were glassy. With fangs, she might have made a passable vampire – one who had just had a meal of tainted blood. She was shuddering visibly. The instruments overhead told him more: her fever was there, but not so bad as theirs. Her heart rate was oddly slow. That was an anomaly; everyone else had elevated heart rates.

Now that he looked, there were other anomalies. Kessel had a fever, but hers was a good two and a half degrees below everyone else's. She was apparently able to talk to the doctor, so she was aware – at least on some level. That was promising.

"Ensign," the doctor said as he approached, "this is...a most unusual request."

"I know," Kessel said vacantly. "I just...," As Paris came over to stand beside the doctor, she trailed off. It took her a few seconds to focus on him and register his presence.

"Hey," Paris said. "What happened down there?"

"The mosquitoes," Kessel said. "They stung Harry...then Chakotay...then Torres...then me. I saw that...that virus. Didn't look right. Then everyone just started...getting sick and dropping." She sighed heavily. "I tried...I should have known...,"

"You did what you were supposed to do," Paris said. "Now look. Captain Janeway is going to take some bioscans of everybody, and we'll figure out what this is, and we'll beat it. If we can figure out why it is you're in better shape than the others, then we can--,"

The doctor gave him a troubled look. "Mr. Paris," he interjected.

Paris gave him a puzzled look. The doctor simply looked down at Kessel. "Ensign?"

Now he was doubly puzzled. Kessel sighed and closed her eyes.

"I don't consent to that," she said finally.

Paris stopped and blinked. Was anyone going to explain what was going on?

"I don't want Captain Janeway to have a scan of me," she said. "I want...er..._was heisst's..._," she stopped, clearly searching for the phrase she wanted. "Medical confidentiality."

Tom Paris glanced over his shoulder where B'Elanna and Harry lay somewhere between life and death, then back at the ensign.

"Are you kidding?" he asked.

Her eyes swept across his face, searching for understanding. "_I'll _do it," she volunteered. "I know what to look for. I'm a biologist too. I scan alien life forms all the time. I can scan myself."

Tom shook his head and smiled, mostly to diffuse the shock of this outlandish request. "You have a fever of a hundred and four. No way are you fit for duty. Come on, are you a spy or something?"

Only once the words were out of his mouth did it occur to him that might be it. After all, everybody had thought Seska was just a loudmouthed Maquis engineer; nobody had ever thought she was actually a Cardassian spy. Had Kessel known much about Seska? If the reference meant anything to the dark-haired ensign, she didn't show it. She simply shook her head.

"Not a spy," she said. "Please. I just...I can't. I have reasons. Good ones."

"And what would those be?" Paris asked.

Kessel's face was pinched as she looked down at the floor. "I can't tell you," she breathed. "Please...I _swear _I'll give her...what she needs. Just not a bioscan."

Paris opened his mouth, trying to think of something to say, when the doctor intervened. "We'll talk about this later," he said smoothly. "Mr. Paris, begin scans of the other patients."

Paris gave the doctor a puzzled look, but moved over to B'Elanna's biobed and began to run the scans for the captain. The doctor followed him over to begin Harry's. Once they were out of the ensign's earshot, Paris pulled a face at the doctor.

"So," he said. "We're just going to let Kessel skate on a bioscan? Come on, doc. She's better off then they are, and we _have _to find out why."

The doctor did not answer for a few moments, aligning his instruments. "Mr. Paris, I've learned one thing in my time practicing medicine," he said. "Upsetting a patient unnecessarily is foolish. Upsetting a patient who is confused and disoriented is doubly foolish. Merely because she's in better condition than Lieutenant Torres or Ensign Kim doesn't mean she is thinking clearly."

Paris examined B'Elanna's readings. "Doc, B'Elanna's fever has gone up three-quarters of a degree in just the past few minutes. We can't wait. If they keep up this kind of fever, they could...," He trailed off. What _would _happen with that kind of fever? A lot of things, none of them good. Brain damage, permanent disabilities, even death. The thought made his stomach churn.

"That's another thing," the doctor said, and gave him a serious look over the biobed panels. "We _must. _We're medical personnel, Mr. Paris. Medical personnel do not treat a patient against that patient's consent."

"What?" The idea sounded preposterous. "Doc, this is the nastiest virus I've ever seen. What if Harry and B'Elanna _die _because some ensign is having a paranoid moment? Come on. We need answers, we need them now, and every minute counts. Besides, Captain Janeway wants a scan."

The doctor turned his attention back to Harry. The limp forms on the biobed seemed so lost and helpless. Even now, their fevers were beginning to creep back up and so were the viral counts in their bloodstreams. Everything they did seemed to be just piling up more sand against the tide. It held back the flood for a few crashes, but then their efforts turned to wet muck under the onslaught.

"We'll have to advise Captain Janeway of Ensign Kessel's decision," the doctor said.

"Well? What if she _orders _her to submit to a bioscan?" Paris pressed.

"That is her decision as captain of the ship," the doctor said pedantically. "She is bound by Starfleet ethics – not medical ethics. The two are different."

Paris grinned. "Well, I'm Kessel's superior officer," he pointed out. "How about we just cut to the chase here and I order her to get scanned?"

The doctor shook his head wordlessly. Somehow, Paris had just known that was coming. His voice changed, becoming more placatory. To his ears it sounded almost whiny, and he hated it. He couldn't stop it, either, and he hated that too.

"Doc," he said, "come on. This is my wife, and my best friend. This virus seems to eat provaline for breakfast. They're half dead, and we've _got _to find out why. Maybe I'm insensitive or whatever, but I'd rather risk upsetting one person than letting three die. Now look. This is the first officer of the ship, and the chief engineer, and the ops officer. We're playing games with their _lives _here!"

"I realize that, Mr. Paris," the doctor said testily, "but while you are working in my sickbay, you will follow medical ethics. Give her some time and try talking to her again."

Paris closed his eyes and heaved a mighty sigh. This whole thing was ridiculous, he thought. Everything had happened so fast. It felt like all he could do was struggle against the tide. The disaster that the away mission had become, the sight of his wife and his best friend laid out while a virus raged through them relentlessly, the one person who might have an answer refusing to help, and the doctor arguing with him over ethics. Ethics! The lives of people he cared about were at risk. That was ethics?

If circumstances had been different, he might have been willing to indulge some weird paranoia on Kessel's part. As it stood? No way. Time was something they just didn't have. Besides, hadn't Captain Janeway ordered the doc to use that hologram that knew all about Cardassian medical experiments on prisoners?

Tom glanced over at the recalcitrant ensign. From where it looked from here, she had fallen asleep. He checked the doctor, who was bent over Chakotay's biobed. Then the answer hit him.

Very carefully, Tom leaned over his wife's biobed. One look down at her pale, wan face told him the right thing to do. It was simple, really. He was leaning over B'Elanna's biobed, but the scanners he called up were over Kessel's. It was better this way. She could have her paranoid moment, but Captain Janeway would have her biodata. The scanners were silent; she wouldn't know until later. Once B'Elanna and Harry were out of the woods, then they could hash it out all they liked.

Ir was the right thing to do.

He didn't have time to read them, but he was pretty sure there wasn't anything to be concerned about. She wasn't a disguised Cardassian like Seska. The bioreadings weren't right. No copper-based blood, so she wasn't a Romulan, and no extra organs, so she wasn't a Klingon. So what was the big deal, anyway?

As quietly as he could, he transferred the readings to a PADD. Then he got Harry's, then B'Elanna's, then Chakotay's. Finally he rose. The doctor looked over at him curiously. Tom harrumphed and brandished the PADD in wordless explanation. Old skills rose to his mind and lips easily; skills he thought he'd left behind him. How to lie easily, and how to slide out of an uncomfortable situation.

"Okay," he said pleasantly. "I'm going to bring these down to the captain. We can talk with Kessel in a little bit." He jerked his head at the dozing ensign. _Careful, don't overdo it. Don't look too sympathetic. _"Besides, maybe after some sleep she'll be clearer in the head."

"All right," the doctor said, and returned to whatever he was doing to Chakotay.

Paris made himself scarce from sickbay as quickly as he could, sliding out the door and down the hall. He grinned down at the PADD. For the first time since the away team had materialized in sickbay, he felt like he had won something. Captain Janeway would be able to figure it out.

The captain herself was deep in mad-scientist mode, poring over a screen that displayed a blown-up version of the virus. It was just about as ugly as the mosquito that had carried it, he thought. It pulsed on the screen in multicolored life, with little prongs and claws sticking off it as if to grab unwary passersby. Which was, after all, just about what it had done.

Captain Janeway took the PADD without looking at him. "Thank you, Tom," she said archly. "If I can see how the virus is affecting them, I can probably get a better idea of what it's doing."

"I hope so," he said. "Say...Ensign Kessel is doing better than the others. Lower fever, plus she can talk. At least for a while. She's sort of out of it, though."

Janeway nodded. "Interesting," she mused. "How are the others?"

Tom shook his head. "We've had to sedate them and try to bring down the fevers," he said. "I'm afraid they'll cook from the inside. It's awful. Are you going to be able to help them?"

"I think so," she said reflectively. "None of our standard antiviral therapies hold it back for very long. It mutates quickly. But it's got a weakness. All forms of life do. If I can see why Kessel is doing better, that'll give me an idea where to look."

Now he was sure. It _had _been the right thing to do. But Harry and B'Elanna were very far from out of the woods, and he wanted to let Captain Janeway do her schtick in peace, so he left the biolab. Once Harry was on his feet again, he'd make a biolab for the Chaotica serials. Chaotica's Evil Lab of Bio-Doom, perhaps. That was something to hold onto. Captain Proton and Buster Kincaid would live to bring Chaotica's Evil Lab of Bio-Doom to its knees. Yes sir. Not too far in the future, either. It might be silly, but it was something to hold onto, and he needed that right now.

So he went back to the sickbay, and did the only thing he could do. He sat with his wife and his friend. He started new rounds of antivirals when the old ones stopped working and their life-signs started creeping towards the red zone again. He stayed with them tirelessly. The doctor had Chakotay and Kessel under control.

Glancing over at the ensign showed that once again, she wasn't fitting the pattern. Her numbers were holding steady. Her heart rate was still way too low, especially when compared to the larruping heartbeats of the others. How come? He was curious, but he didn't have the scientific background to figure it out. All he could do was have faith in Captain Janeway. _She _had the scientific background. If anyone could do it, she could.

He was surprised to see her standing in the doorway, and more surprised to look at the chronometer. Two hours had passed while he sat his lonely vigil He hoped she had good news. A second look at her face told him he might not want to ask. Captain Janeway's face was set in stone, her lips pressed into a firm line. An icy air seemed to surround her. Paris swallowed and tried mightily to keep from asking the question he desperately wanted to ask.

She ignored him, though, and walked up to where Kessel lay dozing on her biobed. She put balled fists on her hips and waited. It didn't take too long before Kessel stirred and noticed the captain, blinking like a little girl roused from her nap. Captain and ensign observed each other for a few silent moments.

"Captain," Kessel said.

"Ensign," Janeway said coolly. "You haven't been...completely forthcoming with us, have you?"

Kessel looked puzzled. "I'm sorry?" she asked.

"Your bioscans," Janeway supplied icily.

A look of horror came over Kessel's face. Paris took a step forward. What was the problem? He'd only had a moment to look at her bioscans, but it was enough to see she wasn't a disguised Cardassian or Klingon or anything like that.

"But, I--," Kessel said. Slow realization slid over her features, replaced by solemn resignation. For a moment her eyes touched his and then slid off to stare at the floor. She swallowed and let out a large sigh, visibly composing herself.

"I always knew this day would come," she said dully. "But to answer your question, captain: No. I have not."


	4. Unmasking

The atmosphere in sickbay was tense. Janeway stared Kessel down as if angry with her. Kessel eyed the floor, dejected. He didn't understand it. He'd only had a moment to glance at the readings, but it was enough to see she was human. So why did it suddenly seem that all hell was breaking loose?

"You have been genetically enhanced," Janeway said icily. "Quite extensively, too. The only place I've ever seen DNA resequenced to quite that extent was in the history books. The Augments, from the Eugenics Wars."

Kessel swallowed and looked away silently. Her shoulders slumped and her eyes slitted in despair. Paris tried not to gawp.

An _Augment? _He knew about the Eugenics Wars, and how Khan Noonien Singh had tried to take over the world with a bunch of his superhuman buddies, and how he'd been found by the _USS Enterprise _a couple of centuries later. Although politics weren't his main interest in the twentieth century, he knew enough. Dimly he remembered one other time, a couple hundred years ago, that Augments had created some kind of ruckus between Earth and the Klingon Empire.

He couldn't see how it could work. The only way he could see would've been if she had been frozen during the Eugenics Wars and thawed out, like Khan. But the _Botany Bay _had been the only ship launched in those days, and it left one big hole: Khan and his Augments had been killed a hundred years ago. If Kessel had been one of Khan's string of genetic superbabes, she'd have been splattered all over the Mutara Nebula with the rest of them.

"I know what you've seen," Kessel began timidly. "And I know what you have to do. But first, let me help. I can...here, with this." She took a breath. Her eyes skittered up to the captain as if hoping for understanding. Whatever she was looking for, it seemed she wasn't finding it.

"It's a question of the immune system," Kessel said. "You – well, the average human -- has between four thousand and eleven thousand white blood cells per microliter of blood. I have sixteen thousand. That's why I'm in better shape than they are." She smiled wryly. "I know my own readings. More CD4 cells and more CD8 cells. Lots more."

Janeway didn't soften an iota, but seemed interested. "Helper T cells and killer T cells."

"Yes," Kessel said.

The doctor came over and frowned. "You seem to know your way around the immune system, Ensign," he said, trying to lighten the mood.

Kessel nodded slowly. "I'm a biologist, doctor. We study a lot of the same things. But that's not the only thing you and I have in common. We are both...artificial." She paused and her throat worked. "Created by man, rather than natural." Her eyes touched Paris's for a moment, glaring openly at him. He swallowed, feeling extremely uncomfortable.

"What you have to do is increase _their _CD4 and CD8 cell count up to my level," Kessel said, gesturing at the other patients. "If we do that, they'll be able to fight off the virus, the same way I am. It may not do the whole job, but it'll buy them time."

The doctor frowned. "We can't stimulate their cell production," he pointed out. "Their bodies are already under substantial demand fighting off the virus."

"You don't do it _in_ their bodies," Kessel said. "I'm not making this up. It's from an article in _Robard's Journal of Cell Biology._ It suggested that one could use cloning to fight fast-acting viruses, like this one. You take a sample of their bone marrow and a sample of cells from their thymus and clone them in a petri dish, and then you work up some blood to supply the whole thing. _That _can be stimulated. Then inject the new cells back into them, and there you go. It won't be easy to keep the cloned cells for more than a week...but that might be all it takes."

Janeway observed the ensign tensely for several moments. "Genetic engineering is banned and unethical. What you're suggesting comes perilously close to that."

Kessel turned her hands palm up. "How is it unethical if it saves lives?"

Tom Paris agreed wholeheartedly, but he didn't think he should interrupt.

"I'm all for saving my crewmen's lives," Janeway said. "But there's a reason genetic engineering is unethical...although you may well disagree."

Kessel winced and her shoulders slumped. "Captain Janeway, ethics is the only reason I'm here in front of you today," she said softly. "And yes, captain. I admit it. I am genetically enhanced. I--,"

Janeway raised a hand and cut her crewman off. "Stop right there, Ensign. I'm going to tell you now: you have rights under the Starfleet Code of Military Justice, and the Federation Constitution. You have the right to remain silent, and you have the right to counsel. But this is _not _the time."

Paris stared and suddenly felt the floor spin under him. Starfleet Code of Military Justice? Rights? Where the _hell _was this going? Now Kessel was a criminal? Okay, maybe she was genetically enhanced, but so far as he knew you had to be the one _doing _ the genetic enhancement to get in trouble. In his humble opinion, he was the ship's expert on criminals, and Kessel didn't seem the type. She seemed like a pale, sick woman facing a horrible fate.

Just what the heck had he let loose? Kessel wasn't going to get in trouble just for being genetically engineered, was she? Heck, if she had an idea that might help Harry and B'Elanna, she could have scales and horns for all he cared.

"Captain, I--," Kessel said, sounding like she was begging the captain's forgiveness. Janeway raised her palm again.

"I don't want you to say anything more right now, Ensign Kessel," she said. She paused, and seemed to be weighing something in her mind. "Not about that. I want to know about that _Robards _article."

Kessel sighed. "Stardate 48315.1, volume 2, issue 15, captain."

"And that method doesn't involve _any _sort of resequencing, or changing the cells in any way?" Janeway pressed.

"No, captain," Kessel said. "It would be the same CD4's and CD8's. Just produced in a lab rather than in their bodies. Cloned cells are not banned."

Janeway nodded slowly and grabbed a PADD. She brought up the article and looked over it. Whatever she saw seemed to please her. Paris craned his neck to try and see it himself. That sort of biochemistry stuff wasn't his strongest point. But if it could help his friend and his wife and daughter, then he was all in favor of it.

"Thank you," Janeway said, a little more stiffly than he expected. "Your cooperation is appreciated. Mr. Paris, I'll be in the biolab. Have the doctor look over this article. I think we may be on to something here."

She turned on her heel and headed out at a businesslike pace. Paris watched her go and felt uncomfortable. He glanced back at Kessel, who sat despondently on the biobed, looking as if the entire world had just crumbled around her. Why was she taking it so hard? He felt like he ought to do something other than just sit there and let her be miserable.

"So," he said. Kessel glanced up at him, barely concealing her distaste. He cleared his throat. Where was that easy line of patter he'd always had with the ladies? It wouldn't come. Of course, it didn't help that Kessel was watching him distastefully, the way she might watch a monkey that had flung its droppings at her.

"So," he tried again, hearing the word fall lamely. "Are you really an Augment?"

Kessel waited a moment before answering. "Do I have to answer that?" she asked, her voice sounding bitter and lost.

Paris blinked. "Uh...I guess not," he said. "Look, I'm not asking to get you in trouble. You're not _in _trouble. It's all going to be okay."

Kessel shrugged, staring at nothing. "For you, perhaps. For them." She gave him a direct, unforgiving look. "You scanned me after I asked you not to."

Paris felt a hot flush rise over his face. "Yes," he said. "They're _dying, _Kessel. If you'd said something you knew beforehand, maybe I could've done something, but what's the big deal anyway? The important thing is to save their lives."

Kessel gave him another look, clearly weighing whether or not to say anything more. He suspected there were a few words she wanted to say to him, none of them being Happy Birthday. There wasn't any point in bothering any more and checked on B'Elanna and Harry. Both of them were still out cold, as they would be for a while. Maybe he ought to see how Captain Janeway was doing.

The doctor was cool and barely acknowledged him as he left. He supposed the doc was annoyed that he'd scanned Kessel. Well, that was just as he'd said to her. Their lives mattered, and Kessel would get over it. So what if she was an Augment? She hadn't tried to take over the ship, or stuff Captain Janeway in a decompression chamber, or stick weird eels in anyone's ears, so she'd be fine.

The captain had apparently decided to take the ensign's suggestion. The article she had mentioned was on a big viewscreen for easy reference, and she had some of the biolab's equipment online and humming. Several petri dishes were arranged in a neat pattern over the lab table, filled with nutritional goo.

"Hi," he said.

"Hello, Tom," Janeway said crisply. She didn't look up, but that was fine.

"So are you going to do that...cooking up some extra CD cells thing?" he asked.

She smiled tensely and nodded. "I think so," she said. "It's a good idea. It'll buy us some time to study the virus. It might not be a cure, but it's a lot better than risking...damage." She didn't add anything more to that, perhaps remembering that his unborn daughter was in harm's way.

"Maybe Kessel could help you," he suggested. "She seemed to know what she was talking about."

Janeway's mouth twitched. "No," she said. "For one thing, she _is _sick, just not as bad as the others. And besides...I don't want to make this any worse than it has to be."

Paris let that sit for a moment or two. "Make _what _worse than it's supposed to be?" he asked. "I mean, maybe I'm missing something here. I probably am. But I just don't get what's so horrible about Kessel being an Augment. She hasn't _done _anything, so why is everyone treating it like it's such a horrible thing?"

Janeway stopped then and stared up at him for several moments. She shook her head and and pressed her lips together, like a woman with a duty she really didn't want to do.

"You really didn't know, did you?" she said quizzically. "I guess you had no reason to."

"Know _what?" _he said, closer to an outburst than was smart with the captain.

Janeway sighed.

"Ensign Kessel has been genetically enhanced," she explained. "Those who have been genetically enhanced are not eligible to serve in Starfleet. They're also banned from certain professions – medicine, sciences, that sort of thing. That's why we have to be careful with this method of helping the away team. If the white blood cells I produce here in these petri dishes are different from their own cells, their own naturally produced cells, then they could fall under the same ruling. It means I have to be _very _careful."

"What would happen?" Tom pressed. "So what if these cells aren't exactly the same? As long as they do the job, who cares?"

"Tom," Janeway said patiently, "just stop,and listen to me. Nothing is going to happen right now. Chakotay, Harry, and B'Elanna are our priorities. I'll do what I can, and we'll hope for the best. As far as Ensign Kessel goes, I'm not unsympathetic, but regulations are clear and my hands are tied."

"What do you mean, your hands are tied?" he persisted.

Janeway stopped and stared at him as if he was a diligent but dull student trying and failing to grasp a lesson. She exhaled sharply through her nose.

"Once all is said and done with the away team," she recited, "we will hold a hearing under Starfleet Article 244-3, violation of eligibility standards. We will convene a council of officers to determine if Ensign Kessel is, in fact, genetically enhanced."

"But she already said she was," Paris said, feeling like he was that diligent but dull student

"Yes. But I do things the right way, Tom. You should know that by now."

"Okay," Tom said. "So we have our official hearing and our official council makes our official finding that Ensign Kessel is officially an Augment, and everything's all nice and official. Then what?"

Janeway pulled a distasteful face. "Then," she admitted, "under Starfleet law, I have no choice other than to dismiss her from Starfleet."


	5. Matters of Principle

_Author's note: _

_Well, here's an update – work and kids have been keeping me busy, but here's a moment in which I got this chapter done. (Some chapters come easy, some come hard, this is one of the latter.) _

_This fic does indeed draw on the DS9 episode 'Dr. Bashir, I Presume', which also had Voyager's own Robert Picardo playing Dr. Zimmerman. I thought that episode was very good, but I didn't like the ending – apparently, a couple minutes worth of off-screen negotiations between Bashir's father and a Starfleet judge, and presto, Bashir was off the hook from a pretty harsh dilemma. I wanted to take a closer look at the idea,so here we are. There will be an explanation of how Kessel managed to avoid being detected as an Augment in the next few chapters, but obviously Bashir got away with it._

The next few days should have been a great weight off Tom Paris's chest, and for the most part they were.

The morning after the away team had been beamed back to sickbay, Captain Janeway had arrived in sickbay bearing a large tray containing sealed beakers full of a thick gooey liquid. She had placed it down and loaded hyposprays with the contents, carefully labeling each one with the name of the crewman for whom it was intended. Slowly, and carefully, they had gone from biobed to biobed, infusing the cloned blood cells into the sickened crew.

Tom had treated B'Elanna and Harry. That much he was obligated to do. It seemed odd to him that this was all there was to it. No complicated procedure, no scanners, no surgery; all he did was fill the hypospray with orange goo, inject it into one, then go and get the other hypospray and do the other. Sure, he knew all the hard part had been done in the biolab, but still, was that all there was?

For a few minutes, he had sat and waited with them. It occurred to him that somewhere down in the biolab, there must be a beakerful of B'Elanna on a table somewhere. There would be a cloned duplicate of B'Elanna's thymus down there, merrily growing new T cells at an accelerated rate. What if it didn't just grow T cells? What if it was growing a whole new B'Elanna down there? What if it got out and started running around the ship?

It would have helped if he'd been able to sleep.

Kessel had remained silent and withdrawn throughout the procedure, and Tom hadn't paid her a whole lot of attention on that first day. It hadn't been anything personal. He'd been vaguely disappointed that Captain Janeway had more or less ignored her. He, at least, could claim that his wife, daughter, and best friend needed him. Captain Janeway was supposed to be everybody's captain. But that had been a very minor thing; the first day's concerns had been B'Elanna and Harry.

He still wasn't sure, looking back, how long it had been in real, objective time. It had seemed like centuries to him. He had sat there, staring at the scanners until his eyes blurred, willing the numbers to change with all his might. After ten minutes or so, they'd get another round of cell infusion. Then he would wait, feeling his nerves dance on edge, waiting for something to happen.

When it finally had obliged him, it had started quietly. He'd been hoping that lights would flash and sirens would go off and B'Elanna and Harry would both get up and the doctor would come over and announce that the virus was no longer present in their bloodstream. If it had been a Captain Proton serial, perhaps he could have gotten the Heal-O-Matic and made them well in a flash.

Reality hadn't been so dramatic. After what he'd sworn had been several decades, B'Elanna's body temperature had ticked down half a degree. A few minutes later, another half. When he'd realized it, he'd looked over to see Harry's was dropping at a similar rate. Their hearts slowed down to a more normal rate, and scanning had shown their viral load was dropping. The white blood cell cavalry had arrived, and it was having an effect.

He still had other patients to keep track of, but he kept an idea on the two of them as much as he could. He'd been infusing Chakotay one more time when he'd heard a faint _click. _It repeated after a few moments, then sped up. _Click, click, click. _

He turned around and was overjoyed at what he saw. B'Elanna's eyes were open, and she was fumbling at the latch holding the sensor palette over her torso. She couldn't get the latch completely open; it was snapping shut at the weak efforts of her fingers: _click, click, click. _ She wasn't completely awake, but the sight of her staring glassily at the latch and trying to pick at it was easily the best thing he could've ever hoped to see. It took only another moment to finish Chakotay's cell infusion. The hypospray tumbled to to the floor as he ran over to his wife.

"B'Elanna!" he said.

Her eyes rolled towards his, sleepy and tired.

"Tom?" she muttered, and coughed. "What happened? Let me out of this thing...," she trailed off, picking at the latch. He opened it and pushed the wings of the sensor palette back.

He grabbed her hand, and it turned to clasp his weakly.

"You were sick," he said, and swallowed. "You were sick, it was some virus in that stupid insect, but it's all gonna be all right, my God, it's so good to see you awake, I can't tell you, I--," He cut himself off before he started sounding like a total idiot. For a few moments he simply tried to breathe and be there for her.

B'Elanna's eyes fluttered for a moment. "The...the baby?" she asked. Her voice sounded powerless and drained. He fumbled for the sensor controls and ran a quick scan, staring at the screen. He already knew that the baby hadn't been affected by the virus – at least, in any way he could see. He'd already run at least a dozen scans in the past few hours alone.

So he just sat with her and reassured her for a while. Harry recovered consciousness maybe an hour laterr. Paris sat with them, and just enjoyed the fact that they were alive and recovering. And he forgot all about Ensign Erika Kessel for a while.

The next two days were long and busy. Captain Janeway was trying to figure out whether to risk another away mission or look for dilithium elsewhere. With three bridge officers in sickbay, a lot fell to those who were still standing. Once he was done with his duty shift, he went to sickbay to visit with his wife and his friend. After sitting with them for a while, he would have a quick, rushed meal in the mess hall, and then hit his cabin for some shut-eye. It was an exhausting routine, but it was all worth it: they were going to be okay, and in the end he'd get through this. That was a great weight off his chest.

And now a day was ending. After another long day and another long sickbay visit, Tom Paris entered his quarters. His cabin was empty and silent as a tomb without B'Elanna there, and her absence hit him anew. That bunk was looking pretty good, though. The terminal on his desk was flashing a message. He sat down and touched the screen to pull it up.

_From: Kathryn Janeway, Captain/USS Voyager_

_To:Thomas Eugene Paris, Lieutenant JG, Flight Controller/USS Voyager _

_Subject: Notice of Selection _

_You have been selected to serve on a council of officers to determine the eligibility of Ensign Erika Kessel to remain in Starfleet. Allegations that she has been subjected to illegal genetic enhancement have been made. This council will investigate these allegations and determine appropriate action. Please see Commander Tuvok or myself with questions. _

Paris groaned, the sharp sound cutting the silence of his quarters. He sat down and stared at the screen for several long moments and tried to compose his thoughts. Like everything else over the past few days, his thoughts were a big snarled mess.

He didn't _want _to be part of this council. The whole thing struck him as stupid. For one thing, Kessel had already _admitted _she was an Augment. As curious as he might be about how she'd ended up here, he didn't think it really mattered. What was the purpose of the hearing? Just to satisfy some stupid official regulation? If Captain Janeway had been more of a by-the-book captain, he might have understood, but she'd bent rules in the past – in some cases, she'd forced the rulebook into contortions worthy of a circus. She'd given him a chance, and Starfleet rules didn't exactly smile on the decision to put a convicted felon as fourth in command. She'd given the Maquis a chance. According to the Almighty Rulebook, Chakotay and B'Elanna and all of them ought to be riding back to the Alpha Quadrant in the brig, not the bridge. For that matter, Starfleet rules would have preferred a decision to shoot Seven of Nine dead than to bring her back to humanity – the Borg weren't exactly on Starfleet's most-favored-race list. So how come she couldn't cut Kessel some slack?

Well, there was only one way to find out, wasn't there?

"Computer, locate Captain Janeway."

_Bloooop. _"Captain Janeway is in the messhall," the computer informed him helpfully. He glanced at the chronometer. She was pulling a late night, wasn't she?

Paris stood up and headed out. He wasn't exactly sure what he was going to say, or what he was going to do, or if this was even a good idea. All he knew was that he didn't like it one bit. For a moment he thought that this was the sort of thing that was going to get him in trouble.

But that hadn't ever stopped him before, now had it?

He headed to the mess hall, trying to think of what he ought to say. His brain felt like a sodden lump in his skull. Words just wouldn't come. Maybe this wasn't a good idea. Maybe a night's sleep was what he needed. But there was part of him that rebelled at that idea, just as he'd rebelled all his life. Somebody had to speak truth to power.

The mess hall was quiet and almost abandoned; only a few crewmen catching extended dinner. The captain was at a table by herself, looking over a PADD, fortified with a mug of coffee. She glanced up at him as he came in. She looked wan and tired; she'd been pushing herself as hard as the remaining bridge officers. He swallowed and felt his stomach churn. This wasn't going to be pretty.

"Good evening, Tom," she said. "I thought you'd be in sickbay."

"I was." He tensed. "I...I see I had a message from you when I got back to my quarters."

Captain Janeway nodded slowly. "Kessel."

"Yes." He strove not to fidget. Tension hung in the air, almost palpable.

Janeway shrugged. "Did you have a question?"

Paris took a moment. "Actually, yes," he hedged.

"All right," Janeway said.

"Why?" he asked. "The whole thing seems silly. She's an Augment, so what? She didn't _do _anything, and there are plenty of people on this ship who _did." _

Janeway nodded. "That's true," she said patiently. "You're confusing this with a criminal hearing. It's not. It's a question of eligibility standards, which Ensign Kessel does not meet. It's not punitive."

"Kicking her out of Starfleet isn't punitive?" Tom asked.

Janeway set her jaw. "No," she said curtly. "Not when she doesn't meet the standard to begin with."

An unpleasant memory swirled unbidden into his mind: himself at twelve, sweating over a calculus textbook. Math had never been his strong point, and he'd really been struggling with the honors calculus class his father had demanded he take. He'd asked his father to drop the class, pointing out that he'd qualified in the Junior Atmospheric Glider Club a year before most kids did. His father had simply stared at him unforgivingly. _You'll need this to get into the Academy. There's a standard, Tom. Meet it. _

Then he blinked, twenty years and untold light-years spinning back to the present, and he knew what he had to say.

"I don't like the idea," he said. "It's not at all what Starfleet is supposed to be about. We've got Klingons in Starfleet – B'Elanna, and there's a full Klingon officer on the _Enterprise, _I think. We've fought wars with the Klingons. We've had battles with the Ferengi, and I heard somewhere there's a Ferengi at the Academy now. So why get all bent out of shape about Augments? You gave me a chance, and the Maquis, and Seven – why can't you give Kessel that chance. This is a witch hunt, this is wrong, and I don't want any part of it"

He'd thrown down the gauntlet. Was she going to pick it up? He might have bought himself another thirty days in the brig. The captain studied him for a long moment over her mug of coffee, and her eyes were cool and calculating. Might be time for that brig visit after all.

When Janeway spoke, her voice was softer than he'd expected.

"Lieutenant, I realize the situation with Torres and Kim has been...very stressful for you. You look exhausted. I've tried to make allowances for that. And I think your intentions are good. But frankly, you're insubordinate and out of line." She shook her head gently. "I'm trying to be understanding...but when it comes down to it, Mr. Paris, I'm the captain, not you. I don't have to justify my decisions to you."

"I think it's wrong," Paris repeated.

"You're entitled to your opinion," Janeway said patiently. "For one thing, you should know that the ban on the genetically enhanced has been in place for a few _centuries _now. The rule is there for a reason. We don't tinker with our genes. We learned the hard way."

"_She _didn't play with her genes," Paris maintained. "Someone _else _played with her genes. It's not fair to hold her responsible for that."

Janeway nodded. "True...to an extent. All the same, she knew she wasn't eligible to join Starfleet. She obviously found some way to beat the bioscanners. Not only that...we had to find her out. She never came forward, not once in seven years. I don't care for that. This crew has been alone in the Delta Quadrant all these years and all we've had to rely on is each other. I don't expect anyone on this ship to _hide _their abilities from me."

"So the fair thing to do is kick her out?" Paris pressed. "There's got to be some other way."

Her eyes flared at him. "_Mr. _Paris, I'm not warning you again. Watch your mouth."

He sighed. "I'm sorry, Captain, I just--,"

She cut him off. "You're overstressed, and understandably so. You are _also _a bridge officer on this ship, and when I call on you to do your duty, I expect you to do it, even if you may not like it. Is that understood?"

He swallowed, realizing he hadn't gotten himself anywhere – except back in the soup, where he always seemed to end up. "Yes, captain," he admitted.

"All right. Get some sleep. Dismissed."

He got up, feeling defeated somehow, and left the mess hall at a brisk trot. Somehow, he had managed to only get himself in trouble right alongside Kessel. All he'd wanted to do was make the captain see. She'd given him and so many others a chance – why couldn't she do it here? Because she was mad Kessel hadn't told her of her unpopular genetic status? Because Kessel had figured out some way to beat the bioscanners? Okay, he allowed, that last might warrant some kind of punishment, but permanent banishment seemed unduly harsh.

Back in his quarters, the computer was quite helpful in providing him the exact Starfleet regulations regarding genetically enhanced people. It was not helpful in providing him what he wanted, which was some basis for his position. It was as Captain Janeway had said before: pretty cut and dry. _Persons who have been genetically enhanced are not eligible to serve in Starfleet. A commanding officer who has reason to believe that an officer or crewman under their command has been genetically enhanced shall convene a council of officers to determine the genetic status of that officer or crewman. If the council determines that the officer or crewman has been genetically enhanced, the commanding officer shall immediately discharge them from further service and formally separate them from Starfleet. _

All of his research indicated the same thing: that as far as Starfleet went, the genetically enhanced need not apply. He didn't like the idea one bit, even after getting bawled out by the captain. Just because it was legal didn't mean it was right. The idea ran counter to everything Starfleet was supposed to stand for. Starfleet was supposed to be about looking beyond what people were. It was a matter of principle.

Principle, he mused. Funny, that. In his prior life, he'd never really cared about principles. His new beginning had given him a place on _Voyager, _and the respect of his fellow officers that he'd worked so hard to earn. He'd never really stood up on moral grounds, except for the Moneans, and that had bought him a thirty-day jaunt in the brig. With his checkered past, the cloak of the moralist sat badly on his shoulders. Captain Janeway had a lot more claim to the moral high ground than he did. Chakotay and B'Elanna had both stayed true to their principles. Even Harry had more of a right to claim the pulpit than he did.

But there it was, pure and inescapable: it was wrong, and if nobody else was going to stand up, then he would.

That wasn't all there was to it, he supposed; there was a little self-interest there too. If Captain Janeway could give Kessel her walking papers solely for what she _was, _then it was possible that other Starfleet officers could be just as unforgiving towards other _Voyager _crewmembers for what they'd _done –_ people like himself, his wife, his friends.

He checked on the Starfleet regs regarding shipborne hearings, and that gave him something to go on, at least. _Voyager _wasn't going to be referring any personnel problems over to the Starfleet Bureau of Personnel or Judge-Advocate General anytime soon, so it would be a shipborne hearing. Feeling a bit more confident, he cleared his throat. "Computer, locate Ensign Kessel."

"Ensign Kessel is in crew quarters, deck ten, section sixteen," the computer said serenely. Paris blinked. When had she been discharged from sickbay? He hadn't even noticed. Some field medic. All the same, it didn't matter. He drummed his fingers on the desk for a moment and took a moment to figure out what he was going to say. Then he tapped his combadge.

"Paris to Kessel."

It took a moment before she answered, sounding surprised and a bit distant over the comm. "Go ahead."

"I want to talk to you. Do you have a minute?"

Another moment's hesitation. She'd be thinking about what she should say; whether or not he was going to get her in worse trouble than she already was. He knew the feeling a lot better than she did.

"I have time, yes," she said guardedly. "I'm...confined to quarters right now. Medical leave."

He paused. "Are you contagious?" Just after he'd said it, it occurred to him that if the illness was contagious, he'd have keeled over from it long ago, since he'd been spending at least four hours a day sitting right next to two infected people. He smiled at his own error.

"No," she said abruptly. "Not unless I bleed on you. It's blood-borne."

"Okay," he said. "You want to do this tomorrow, or what?"

"It doesn't matter," Kessel said stiffly. "Now is fine. I have little to do. What is this about?"

"I want to talk to you, and not over comms," he said. "See you in ten."

The ship was quiet as he went; it was the middle of a duty shift and the halls were deserted. Good thing, he supposed. Here his pregnant wife was in sickbay and he was paying a visit to a female ensign; whatever would people think? But whether or not anyone believed it, his intentions were pure.

As he approached Kessel's door, it _wssshed _open before he could do anything. He stopped, nonplussed, and stepped up to the doorway. The lights came up as he stood at the door.

"I heard you coming," Kessel said thinly, sitting at her desk. She still looked pale and sick; he supposed she was still recovering. "Come in. What was it you wanted?"

"I, uh...I wanted to see how you were doing," he said.

She observed him for a moment as if he was an interesting alien specimen. "You could have asked _that _over comms," she pointed out. "All right, I guess. Enough that the doctor discharged me." She watched him warily. "I got the notice from Captain Janeway. There's going to be an inquiry."

"I know," he said.

"I asked you not to scan me," she said archly.

Paris nodded. "Yes, you did. Three other people were dying and we needed answers. Look, though...I helped get you into this mess. I'll help get you out."

She digested that for a moment, watching him warily. What was grinding away in that genetically enhanced brain of hers? He couldn't tell. Her face was blank and didn't give a lot away.

"How could you get me out of this?" she asked. "Come down in your Captain Neutron rocketship and save the day with a laser beam? That's not going to help."

"Probably not," Paris agreed. "It's Captain Proton, but anyway. No, Ensign Kessel, you don't need Captain Proton, you need a defense counsel. Believe me, I am _the _ship's expert on when someone needs defense counsel. That's what I'm here for, Kessel. I'm volunteering to defend you at the hearing."

Kessel shrugged and threw up her hands. "What good would defense counsel do? I _am _genetically enhanced. I _am _an Augment. What are you going to do, say that I'm not?"

Paris smiled and shook his head. "Nope," he said. "Challenge the ban. The last case was a hundred years ago, Kessel. I looked it up. Times have changed, people have changed, and Starfleet can change. We'll make it."

Kessel raised an eyebrow in a rather Vulcan gesture. "_You _are going to defend me?"

"Better," Paris vowed. "I'm going to defend you, I'm going to win, I'm going to overturn the ban on the genetically enhanced, and you're going to keep your career in Starfleet. Count on it."

She chuckled. "You don't lack for confidence, do you, Lieutenant Paris? You're talking about changing a rule that's in place for two centuries."

"That's exactly what I'm going to do," Paris said. "Because it's wrong, and I'm right."


	6. Interview

_Author's note: I'm not dead yet! Work is keeping me extremely busy. So, here's another chapter which will answer a few questions. Enjoy._

"First things first," Paris told the ensign. "In order to defend you, I have to know your story. So I gotta ask you some questions. I need you to be honest with me. Anything you tell me is confidential, so you don't need to worry about me telling anybody. But I _need _answers."

Kessel nodded, still eying him a little warily.

"_Straight _answers. Complete answers," Tom persisted. Somehow, he thought Kessel might well split that hair if she had the chance.

There was still a distance between them; he could feel it. She didn't let her shields down easily. He found himself wondering if she ever had. Sort of like B'Elanna, he reflected, although B'Elanna included a healthy offense along with her defense. Silence reigned as they watched each other for a few moments.

"I'm trying to help you," he reminded her.

"I know," she said shortly.

"First," he said. "I gotta ask. Are you really a Eugenics War Augment?"

Kessel stiffened and broke eye contact, looking away. Her hands flexed and she bit her lip. She held her silence for three beats, then swallowed, gathered her courage, and answered the question she had obviously been avoiding most of her life.

"Yes," she said.

"How is it you're here, now, on _Voyager?" _he asked.

"Okay," Kessel said slowly. "The...the big question, _nicht wahr?_" She smiled humorlessly and stared for a moment at the door. He thought she might try to get up and bolt.

"Gesundheit," Paris said, trying to put her at some kind of ease. It got a tense, uneven smile, but hey, tense and uneven was better than nothing.

Kessel fidgeted for another few seconds, swallowed again, and took a breath. "Have you...have you ever heard of the Augment Crisis of 2154?"

Paris shrugged. "Probably a while ago. Refresh my puny non-enhanced memory, will you?"

That got another quick smile. "Dr. Arik Soong had taken Augment embryos and raised them to adulthood in the 2130's. He had been captured and put in prison. As adults, Soong's Augments hijacked a Klingon bird of prey. The _Enterprise – _the _NX-01 Enterprise – _was sent to go after them. Captain Archer took Soong into custody on his ship, but Soong escaped."

Tom thought. Yeah, he'd heard of this, but twenty-second-century history was not his specialty. Kessel had learned the story by heart, it seemed. "I heard something about that," he hedged. "Soong tried to attack some space station, didn't he?"

Kessel smiled coolly. "Soong _did _invade Cold Station 12 with his Augments, and stole fifteen hundred Augment embryos from cold storage in that facility." She gestured at herself. "I was one of those embryos."

Now he remembered a story B'Elanna had told him once: how it was some Klingons didn't have brow ridges and looked more human. "Wait...didn't the Klingons get those embryos? And they did something...oh, I forget what it was. But they messed up and erased their foreheads."

Kessel drew herself up and continued, still reminding him of an Academy history professor. Well, if she could give him answers via a history lecture, that was fine. "The Klingons _did _get the embryos. Captain Archer shot down the Augments' ship above a Klingon colony planet. Apparently, he didn't think we were worth saving. The ship crashed, and the Klingons retrieved some of us from the wreckage. They tried to make their own Augments, but it didn't work. One of their subjects had the Levodian flu, and our genes modified the virus. It caused them to become more human in appearance – without the distinctive Klingon forehead."

_Jeez, she talks like an encyclopedia. Thank you, Frau Professor Kessel, _Paris thought but decided not to say. If talking about it like a history lesson kept her talking, so much the better. "So you were there? On that ship?"

"Well, technically, yes," Kessel said, staring at him as if he was insane. "It's not like I _remember _it. I was an embryo. I was about a centimeter long and didn't have a brain yet."

"Well, yeah," he admitted. "Still...they had you for two hundred years?"

Kessel nodded. "The Klingons admitted to only having a few embryos, when the Augment virus came out," she explained. "Actually, they had a lot more – several hundred. They developed a quiet little eugenics program on a distant planet, far away from the centers of the Empire, and they tried a few more times over the years. They never tried to make Klingon Augments again – not after the virus – but they _did _try to bring several Augments to life. They thought we would make good spies. But they couldn't control the Augments. It usually ended badly."

For a moment he wondered what 'ended badly' might mean with Klingons on one side and guys like Khan Noonien Singh on the other. It probably involved a lot of fighting and bleeding. "Superior ability breeds superior ambition," Paris observed.

Kessel shook her head. "_Pfui. _That's a canard that Starfleet uses to justify discriminating against us. I never put Ceti eels in anyone's ears or tried to take over the ship. No, Lieutenant – the reason the Eugenics Wars broke out and the reason the Klingons could never control the Augments were one and the same – defective genes. Genes that control the levels of neurotransmitters in the brain. The older Augments couldn't help their behavior. Their brains didn't work right."

Paris leaned forward, interested. "Really?"

"Yes," Kessel said. "I can show you a genetic map if you want." She gave him another tense smile. "I know exactly where the defective base-pairs are and how to repair them."

Paris shook his head and chuckled. "That's okay, I'll take your word for it. Keep going."

Kessel took a breath and continued. "Once the Klingons allied with the Federation, the interest in us died down. There were forty-eight Augment embryos left – one of them myself. We were in a freezer on that planet in a Klingon biological research laboratory, and we were left there for years. Over a century, actually."

"What happened?" Paris asked.

"One man's ethics, that's what," Kessel said. "One man's ethics, but that's all it took. I told Captain Janeway ethics was the only reason I'm on this ship today. That's true. One Klingon biologist named K'Voch took a look at us. He saw that cells were breaking down...dying. K'Voch realized that we couldn't remain frozen any longer. The embryos that we came from had been frozen for a few _centuries. _It turns out you can't freeze embryos for _that _long. There were two choices: either bring the embryos to life, or let them die. K'Voch was a moral man – an ethical man. He saw no honor in letting helpless embryos die. That left him only one choice. "

"Which was what?" Paris said, leaning forward.

"Obviously, he couldn't bring us to life himself," Kessel said. "Can you imagine? There would be no way to hide forty-eight human children for a Klingon. What he did was contact a human biologist in the Federation whom he knew. Another man who respected life, and respected it enough to think it should be extended even to us."

Paris leaned forward. This was interesting. He knew some things about Klingons, by dint of his relationship with B'Elanna, but he hadn't ever really thought of one taking a moral stance. Klingon morals were more along the idea of 'smash things with really shiny _bat'leths_', from his cursory knowledge of them.

"Who was that?" he prompted.

Kessel stopped and her mouth twitched. "Dr. Heinrich Kessel," she said unwillingly.

"Your dad?" he asked.

"Yes," Kessel agreed. "That's part of what bothers me. I don't want him to get in trouble. He's seventy and he's in a mobility chair. I don't want him going to prison."

Paris shrugged. "He's not part of this hearing, Kessel," he said. "We'll do what we can. So what did your dad do?"

"K'Voch reported us destroyed, and passed us off to my father at a scientific conference," Kessel said. "My father read Soong's work. Even two hundred years ago, Arik Soong knew about the defective neurotransmitter genes. My father's pretty well known in the field, and he arrived at the same conclusion. So he repaired us – a simple matter with modern technology. That's why we don't have the same violent and erratic behavior." She gave him a sudden imploring look. "Really. We're no harm to anyone. We just want a place in society."

"I know," he said. "That's the idea, Kessel." Then he thought for a moment and what she'd said before going off on her little tangent registered. "Wait a minute...your dad raised _forty-eight _Augments?"

_"Oh nein,"_ Kessel said, looking surprised. "No, not at all. Can you imagine forty-eight Augment toddlers? It would have been chaos. According to my parents, I was enough of a handful. No. My father found others who felt as he did."

"Others who felt...what, exactly? That eugenics deserved another go?" Paris asked. Could that be possible? After all, hadn't it been the scientists of the twentieth century who had made the first Augments? Dumb ideas had a habit of coming around again. Up until now, he hadn't been up to speed on Federation law about the genetically enhanced, but he doubted that bringing Augments back was legal.

Kessel shook her head and looked irritated. "Others who felt that to let us die for the crimes of our predecessors was morally indefensible. Others who felt that _all _innocent life is sacrosanct, _including_ Augment embryos. Others who felt that a civilization that does not protect innocent life doesn't deserve to be called a civilization. Others who felt that we just might have something to offer the universe."

He sensed real anger from her, and withdrew a little. "Sorry," he said. "I didn't mean...to upset you."

She pulled back a little and eyed him warily. "It's all right," she said. "You've been taught all your life that Augments were capable of nothing but evil."

That was a good way to put it, he thought. He'd have to use that somehow. Augments weren't all evil. Even so, he had a job to do. "Okay...nobody noticed this little project of your dad's? I mean, didn't he need scientific equipment and artificial wombs and stuff to pull this off?"

She shook her head and studied him from those green eyes. Her eyes were pretty, he thought. You had to look at her to notice them. She'd made quite an art form out of deflecting attention and evading the spotlight. "No," she said. "All the families that took us in were married couples. We were implanted naturally and gestated quite normally."

He stopped, trying to figure out what she was talking about. "Implanted? I'm missing something here...,"

Kessel shrugged. "Oh," she said. "I thought you'd know from being a field medic, Lieutenant Paris. Implanting an embryo in a uterus is a very simple procedure. Back in the twentieth century, it was an iffier proposition – but with modern medicine, implantation is almost a guaranteed success."

"Oh," Paris said, and flushed. "That was...a little more than I needed to know."

"It's just biology," Kessel said, and seemed miffed. "Your wife is pregnant. I thought you'd have studied up on the subject. And you said you wanted straight and complete answers."

"Yeah," Paris said, "but I didn't...," he shook his head. Kessel might not have messed-up neurotransmitter levels the way prior Augments did, but he didn't think her brain worked quite like other people's either. She was cute, but she didn't seem to understand social behavior much better than Mortimer Harren, _Voyager's _other maladjusted scientist in residence. "Well, yeah, actually, I did say that," Paris admitted. "Don't worry about it. So then what?"

Kessel shrugged. "I was born, and raised by my parents," she said. "Nothing too dramatic, really. No tragedy or angst. My parents were older, I was an only child, and they doted on me. _Vati _is a biologist, _Mutti _is a chemist. They're both full professors at _die Freie Universität Berlin." _She stopped. "Er. Sorry. Free University of Berlin."

Paris shrugged. "I got the idea," he said. "Go on."

"Not much to tell, really. I had everything I could want. I grew up around the university – a faculty brat. I did well in school, I was able to take university classes when I was very young, and I continued with that until I went to Starfleet Academy."

"And nobody ever tipped to realized what you were?" he asked. "Even growing up right on Earth?"

She shook her head. "People expected I would be intelligent. My parents were. I was in the gifted and talented classes in school. _Everybody _there was highly intelligent. I doubt I was the only genetically enhanced one, either."

"Yeah, but you were taking university classes as a kid," Paris pointed out. "That didn't make anybody look twice at you?"

Kessel chuckled. "You're thinking that's because I was an Augment. Actually, it was because I was a faculty brat. A lot of professor's children did it. Parents pull strings for their children."

_Not all of them, _Paris thought, and thought of his father. "Now, when you went to Starfleet Academy," he said, trying to make it sound casual, "how did you get out of being bioscanned?"

Kessel tensed and held her tongue for a long moment.

"Remember, everything you tell me is confidential," he reminded her.

She remained silent for another few moments. "I, uhhh...I didn't," she said. "I...," She got up and strode over to her bureau, rummaging through a drawer. A moment later she came back with a medical tricorder in one hand and a small object he didn't recognize in the other. It was curved and had a few small buttons on it, along with a tiny screen that looked to be about the size of that of a twentieth-century calculator.

"What is that?" he asked.

Kessel's mouth quirked. "It's a sensor spoofer," she said, and gave him the medical tricorder. "Here. Scan me."

He took the probe and waved it in front of her. The readings that came up would have made anyone look twice. Her heart rate was forty beats a minute, her blood oxygen levels were higher, her lung efficiency a good chunk higher than it should have been. Anyone waving this thing around would have known that she wasn't what she appeared to be. After a moment, the genetic scan began. The helix that appeared didn't look like anything he'd ever seen before. It looked like somebody had hacked up her DNA with the genetic engineering equivalent of a hacksaw and then tried to glue it back together. He didn't think some of the added sequences were even human in origin. Then there were other sequences that were clearly done with a more sophisticated hand.

Kessel smiled bitterly. "Twentieth century techniques were rather crude," she commented drily. She tapped one of the buttons on her curvy thing. The screen came to life with alphanumeric characters. "Now scan me again."

He complied, and the results that scrolled up his screen were markedly different, indicating that Erika Kessel was a completely normal human being. Heart rate, lung efficiency, blood oxygen levels – anything he scanned came up as completely normal. The DNA that came up now was that of a completely human woman who did not appear to have been genetically enhanced in any way.

"Your little toy there did all that?" he asked.

She nodded. "Medical tricorders haven't changed much in the past several years," she explained. "You think it always gives you the truth, but it doesn't. It's just a device. If you know how the device works, you can build another device to fool it. It's not very difficult, really. Many engineers could do it. Most doctors could; they're expected to know how a tricorder works."

Paris paused. This was going to complicate things a little bit. Neglecting to tell her superiors that she was genetically enhanced was one thing; actively using her little doodad to jam the tricorder was another. Still, he'd think of something. _She only did it because of Starfleet's rule against the genetically enhanced, the whole idea of Starfleet is that your DNA doesn't matter, just what you do, we have to take the whole situation in perspective..._

_Stick to the job, Tom. Get her story so you can tell it. _"Did you design that yourself?" he asked.

She shook her head. "I had a lot of help," she said. "_Vati _and I worked out the DNA sequence that could pass for my own. It took a few months. The head of the Microtechnology Department at the university actually built it for me."

He raised an eyebrow. "Sounds like you had quite the conspiracy behind you," he quipped.

Kessel stiffened again. "Conspiracy...if you like. These were people who believed we should have the same choices in life as anyone else."

He decided to get off the subject, even though the idea fascinated him. All these people doing all this...just out of conscience? It seemed almost suspicious; it was hard to believe that a group of people would raise a bunch of Augment children as their own, providing them with tools to blend into society, just because they believed it was the right thing to do. It struck him as like the Maquis – well, the _other _Maquis. He'd signed up mostly to fight and fly and drink. Others had fought for principles.

He held his hand out. "Let me see your gadget there," he said. She handed it over obediently. He stared at it for a moment before realizing he couldn't make heads or tails out of the alphanumeric characters flashing across the screen. Whoever had made it had known what they were doing; they'd packed a lot of circuitry into a very small, thin unit. What could B'Elanna make out of it? He'd have to see.

"Why didn't you have this on the away mission?" he asked.

Kessel shrugged. "I didn't want it to interfere with my sensor readings. I was in the shuttle manning the scanners. I thought it would be safe to go without it."

"Why is it curved like that?" he continued.

She stopped and grinned impishly and chuckled before answering.

"What?" he asked.

Kessel appeared to take great pleasure in explaining it. "It's curved, Lieutenant Paris, because it's supposed to fit in my bra, where doctors would be more likely to try to avoid it during a routine physical."

A bolt of ice struck him and he handed the device back to her tweezed between two fingers. "Oh," he said shortly. "Don't tell me where the male version fits."

"All right," Kessel said agreeably, still grinning at his discomfiture.

"Let's get back on track," Paris said. "How many other Augments are there?"

She cocked an eyebrow at him as if the question was dumb. "Forty-seven," she said. "I told you that."

Paris didn't feel like arguing the point. She might well have told him, but he didn't enjoy a genetically enhanced memory. "All your age?"

"All my age," Kessel agreed.

"How many of them are in Starfleet?" he asked.

Kessel froze, clenching her hands. "Do I _have _to answer that?" she responded.

Paris shrugged. "Do me a favor, Kessel...belay the paranoia, all right? I'm trying to help you."

She paused. "I'm sorry," she said, looking down at her feet. "I just._...ach.,"_ she studied hm for several long moments as if sizing up his trustworthiness. "Thirty-four. All of us in the same year."

"You all went to the Academy at the same time?" he asked, dumbfounded. Boy, too bad he hadn't known. Someone who bet on Starfleet Academy's sports teams that year would've made a killing with a bunch of genetically enhanced cadets on the team.

Kessel looked at him oddly. "We were all born within a month of each other," she explained. "Of course we'd be in the same year. We didn't all know each other, though. We were scattered throughout the Federation. Some of us were raised on Earth, others on colony planets. " She chuckled. "Your friend Ensign Kim didn't know it, but most of the people in his dorm floor were Augments."

He tilted his head. "Harry?"

Kessel nodded.

"Harry was valedictorian of his class," Paris said. "You mean he beat out a bunch of Augments?"

Kessel smiled and seemed to relax a bit. "Not bad for a puny human," she quipped. "I learned very early that it wasn't always the smartest move to show off everything I'm capable of doing. Most of us did. A little circumspection buys a lot of peace."

Paris chuckled. "You think you might be able to get that idea across to Seven of Nine? Might do her a world of good."

Kessel winced. "I doubt it. I rarely talk to her."

It was interesting to watch, he noticed. She had stiffened and pulled away when he mentioned Seven. Her dislike of the Borg drone was glaringly obvious. How come? They were similar in a lot of ways.

"Do you not like her, or something?" he asked.

She exhaled. "She's allowed to run around the ship, do whatever she wants, ignore regulations, and Captain Janeway lets her get away with anything," she said. "_I _could do some of the things she does. I, uh...I _could _offer a lot more to this ship than I have. It's just...I...,"

Paris nodded. That was exactly it, and _that_ was why Captain Janeway was cracking down on the Augment ensign. It wasn't so much Starfleet law, although the law did say _Augments need not apply._ Captain Janeway could be convinced to ignore that. No,the captain's ire against Kessel was because she had spent the time in the Delta Quadrant hiding back, keeping her talents to herself. Defending her on that was going to take some work. It wasn't something the captain would forgive easily.

Better to take that bull by the horns. "Why didn't you?" he said.

Kessel squirmed uncomfortably. "Why didn't I what?"

Paris exhaled slowly. "Why didn't you offer everything you could to _Voyager_? You know the question will come up in the hearing."

The woman pulled back. Her face pinched into a miserable expression. "_Everything_? You don't understand...," Her eyes swept his face, searching for some sort of understanding. Paris watched, suddenly reminded of himself after his first and last Maquis mission. That was the look of new fish freshly arrested: groping for their new place in life, desperately seeking some sort of acknowledgement from their new guards.

"So, make me understand," Paris said. "Explain it to me."

"What was I supposed to do?" she burst out. "'Oh, Captain Janeway, I wanted to let you know, I can lug photon torpedoes around by myself, and I can usually figure out what Lieutenant Torres is doing if I just stand and watch her for a few minutes even though I'm not an engineer, and oh, did I mention my big sister was one of Khan's followers and tried to help him take over the _Enterprise? _Just think about it when you're making up the crew assignments.'"

Her face had flushed red, and her hands shook. Her voice had risen to almost a scream. She stopped, swallowed, and took a moment to compose herself. Paris knew that score: she knew damn well she'd been laying back in the tall grass and wasn't proud of it.

"Part of me did want to tell her," she said in a thin and watery tone. She seemed spent and defeated, staring down at the table rather than making eye contact. "I tried to get up the courage. But I never could. What if she didn't take my side? In the Alpha Quadrant, I'd get kicked out of Starfleet, but that would be the worst of it. Here, it's different...we're so far from home. Without a Starfleet rank..." she shook her head. "I was afraid I'd end up waitressing in the mess hall for the next seventy years. Call me a coward. It was a risk I didn't want to take. Now I have to pay for it."

Paris nodded. "It's something we'll have to deal with," he said. "We've got some time. I know your story, I'll come up with a way to defend you, and I'll help get you through this.. Don't talk about your case with anybody else, except me. Don't tell anyone else what we talk about."

"All right," she said weakly.

His combadge buzzed. B'Elanna's voice came from it, sounding frail and tired. "Torres to Paris."

He smiled, feeling guilty somehow. "Um, do you mind if I take this?"

Kessel shook her head. He tapped his combadge. "Go ahead," he said.

"Where are you? I woke up and you weren't here."

He flushed, feeling caught between his responsibility to his wife and the responsibility he'd just taken on. "I'm, uh, I'm on deck ten. I'll be right there." He stood up, offering Kessel an apologetic smile. "I'm sorry. It's just...,"

Kessel shrugged. "It's all right," she said. "Go to your wife."

"Thanks. I'll see you later. Keep your chin up. It's going to be okay." The platitudes tasted stale in his mouth, but he felt like he had to say something. For a moment he remembered his own defense counsel at his own trial. At the time, he'd thought his defense counsel to be happy and bouncy to the point of stupidity. Now, he had a little more perspective. His defense counsel had been trying to keep up his spirits, and now he saw why, quite clearly.

As he headed down to sickbay to visit his wife, he tried to mull this over. He'd thought this was going to be a slam dunk. All he would have had to do was point out the Federation's policy of tolerance, inclusion, and nondiscrimination, and that would have been it. Now he wasn't so sure. He still might win, but it wasn't going to be easy.

Even so, he found himself thinking about Kessel's story. The Klingon biologist, her father, those other families who had taken in the Augment embryos to raise as their own children – all of them had taken no small risk. They probably would have faced criminal charges if they'd been caught. He didn't know what punishment the Klingon Empire might mete out for the Klingon biologist who had stolen the embryos in the first place, but Klingons weren't noted for their forgiving ways.

People like that reminded him that the journey of his rehabilitation wasn't quite done yet. This was a start, though. It fell to some to fight for their homes. It fell to others to take in and shelter the last refugees of the Eugenics Wars. It fell to him to challenge the ban on Augments – the last Starfleet ban of its type.

Now, all he had to do was figure out just _how_ he was going to do it.


	7. One Up, One Down

_Author's note: I'm not dead! Really! RL concerns tend to take precedence over writing, that's all. _

His mind felt like it was stuck on warp nine. Everything kept churning through his head at once. On one hand, he knew that he had to slow down, absorb Kessel's story, and figure out what the hell he was going to do in order to defend her. Knowing it was one thing; doing it was another.

He had a sneaking feeling this wasn't going to be as easy as he'd first hoped. It had seemed so simple. Kessel couldn't help the fact that she was an Augment. Therefore, discriminating against her for that was wrong. It would be just as wrong as discriminating against B'Elanna for being half-Klingon, or Seven for being ex-Borg.

But it wasn't as easy as all that. Kessel hadn't behaved in the most honorable way. She'd jammed the bioscaners with her little gadget. She'd hidden her gifts, laying back in the biolab and letting the command crew make the tough calls. She'd never stepped forward and volunteered her intelligence or her strength. She'd commented about being able to figure out what B'Elanna was doing just by watching her. Who knew what could've happened if Kessel had been honest? According to what research he'd been able to do, Augments were twice as intelligent as normal people. Maybe she could've figured out transwarp. Maybe they could have already been home.

He'd have to have an answer for that; any prosecutor worth his salt would ask that question. And a prosecutor was the right word: no matter how Captain Janeway might dress this up as a question of eligibility standards, this was a trial. No more, no less.

Then again, he thought, maybe it _was _that simple. Kessel had hidden because she was afraid. She'd used the jammer because she was afraid. She was afraid that exactly this situation would come up: her career would be threatened because Starfleet barred Augments, in violation of its highest principles. And if a rule was wrong, then was it really fair to charge someone with disobeying it?

_He _could understand why Kessel had been scared. His understanding came from two simple words, two words that would always make his stomach tense when he heard or thought them: Caldik Prime.

He'd covered up his misdeeds, and Kessel had covered up her unpopular genetic origins. Both had eventually been found out. Both had the same motive: simple, plain old fear. Fear of the consequences, fear of disapproval. Ultimately it came down to one question: was someone who did something stupid in a moment of fear worthy of a second chance? This time, might he be able to get Kessel that second chance without making her pay the price he had?

There was still part of him that insisted that it _was _that simple. Discrimination was wrong. End of story. He couldn't quite put the right words to it, but the idea repulsed him and made him angry. For all these years, Tom Paris had struggled to earn the respect of his fellow Starfleet officers. He'd striven to show that Starfleet's principles weren't lost on him. Now, things were different. Now it wasn't him slacking on principles. Now, it was Starfleet itself. He'd had to work to earn his place back. Now, Starfleet was going to have to change.

But for now, he had to see to his wife. Stepping from the lift, he headed into sickbay at a jog. He turned, scanning for B'Elanna's biobed, and swallowed nervously. She wasn't there. The doctor was, and gave Paris a cool look.

"Mr. Paris," he said simply.

"Hi, doc," Paris answered. "Hey, where's B'Elanna?"

"Released half an hour ago," the doctor said primly.

Paris swallowed. Dread puddled in his stomach. Now he was gonna get it. _Idiot, _he cursed himself. _You should've asked the computer where she was. _

"To where?" he asked.

"Her quarters, of course. She has three days on medical leave, with more if necessary. For the time being, she's under the same quarantine that Ensign Kessel is." The doctor gave him a sterner look, as if reminding him of the mess Kessel was in.

"I just talked to Kessel. She looks all right. Why the quarantine? Unless they bleed on someone, it should be okay."

The doctor scowled. "Better to keep them in quarters, where the odds of finding someone to bleed on are a lot less, don't you think?"

Paris nodded slowly, his mouth tightening. The doc wasn't usually this distant with him. Taking the holographic bull by the horns seemed the best option. "Doc, are you mad at me?"

The doctor paused. "I don't approve of what you did," he said shortly. "I'm aware of Starfleet regulations, but we are medical personnel. Medical ethics do not permit simply end-running around a patient's objection, or desire for medical confidentiality."

Paris sighed, exasperated. Was everyone going to be this difficult? "Doc, we had three people down. They almost died."

"Your aim was commendable. Your means were not," the doctor observed.

Paris hissed air through his teeth. "All right," he said. "Fine. Look, I'm defending Kessel at her hearing. If you don't want me in your sickbay anymore, then...I'll understand."

Without waiting for a reply, he turned on his heel and left. Anger made his face flush and his skin hot. He had a lot on his mind, and now B'Elanna was out of sickbay. So now she'd be mad before he could explain that was going on. Great. Just great.

Ethics, again. The doctor was annoyed with him because he thought he'd violated medical ethics. Then there were the Federation's ethics, forbidding genetic engineering and allowing what he'd done. Counterpointing that were the people who had helped Kessel and her fellow Augments evade the barriers society had erected for them. Everybody acting at cross purposes to each other, and every oneof them believed that he was doing the right thing.

For now, though, the right thing was seeing his wife and making sure she was all right, preferably without getting something heavy thrown at him. Although the discomfort of late-term pregnancy had slowed B'Elanna down some, her throwing arm was about as good as ever. He stood in front of the doors to their shared quarters and took a deep breaths. A moment to gather his thoughts would help. The doors opened helpfully at his approach, denying him that moment.

Paris glared at them for a moment, as if they had done so deliberately.

"Tom?" came a voice from inside, thin, weak and watery. It took him a moment to recognize it as B'Elanna's. Frustration and guilt came over him; he hadn't thought she was _this _bad off.

"I'm here," he said, and stepped forward. The lights were low and his eyes had to adjust. B'Elanna was sprawled bonelessly in bed, still in her uniform. She scowled at him in the dimness.

"Where were you?" she asked, and the powerlessness in her voice made him feel guilty. "The doc said I could go...and you didn't come."

"I...," he bit the sentence off, realizing he was about to say _I was in Ensign Kessel's quarters, _which might not be the brightest thing to say right now. "I...I was talking to somebody."

"Who?" The sheets rustled as she shifted to better look at him.

"Somebody else who was sick. I wanted to see how they were doing. I didn't know you were released from sickbay," he improvised.

"I wanted you _here_," she said weakly.

"I'm sorry," he said simply.

She let out what sounded like a cross between a grunt and a wheeze. "So, how's Harry anyway?"

He swallowed. A lie might smooth things over, but it seemed wrong to lie when she was so weakened. "I haven't seen Harry yet," he said. "I was talking to Kessel."

The bed creaked as she moved, and anger colored her voice. "_Kessel?" _

"Yes." He stepped forward and sat down at the edge of the bed. "B'Elanna...she was a lot better off than you and Harry. She's...she's an Augment. A real, honest-to-God, Eugenics War Augment."

Even in the darkness he could see her eyes flash at him. Her voice was hot. "Your pregnant wife is sick and you went off to go frolic with some _ensign_?"

"No," he said. "Listen. She's an Augment. She's genetically enhanced. People like that can't serve in Starfleet. So there's going to be a hearing."

"I heard about that in sickbay. So she's an Augment. So there's a hearing," B'Elanna grumbled. "So what?"

"So," Tom said gently, "I'm going to defend her."

Heavy silence weighed down the room for a few moments. He swallowed, wondering if someone had turned up the gravity in their quarters, or if it just felt that way. B'Elanna eyed him sourly in the darkness. Finally, a single word broke the standoff.

"Why?"

He blinked.

"How can you say that?" he chided. "B'Elanna, I'm sorry I wasn't here when you got out, but come on. You stick up for your engineers. You always stick up for the little guy."

B'Elanna gave him a tired, crabby look. "So what?" she said. "If she doesn't meet the standard, she doesn't meet the standard."

Tom frowned. "I can't believe you're saying that," he protested. "You...me...we're both ex-Maquis. I'm a convicted felon. We don't meet the standard either."

She shrugged. "Not according to Captain Janeway. She's the captain, so it's her call. And believe me, after all this time I've learned to trust her. She's as fair as any captain I've ever worked for. If she says Kessel goes, then she has her reasons and Kessel goes, and that's too bad for our little ensign."

Tom took a few moment to sift over what he was going to say. Pointing out the many instances in which B'Elanna hadn't been quite so trusting of Captain Janeway came to mind, but he doubted it would be helpful. Other than that, there was only one other thing that came to mind to say. Further reflection didn't give him any new ideas on how to say it. It was going to get him in trouble, but it had to be said.

"Captain Janeway's wrong on this one."

B'Elanna scowled. "No, she's not," she said. "And just what were you doing with Kessel, anyway?"

"Talking," he said hotly. "Now be fair. I have _never _done anything,--"

She cut him off. "Talking." Contempt dripped from her tone.

"Yes. Talking. For God's sake, she needs defense counsel."

Her eyes flashed. "Somebody else can do it!" she snapped.

Tom shook his head slowly. "I already said I would," he said.

"Let someone else," she said inexorably. "Tom, I don't mean to be bitchy, but I haven't been this bad in a long time." She paused, clearly struggling with herself. "_I _need you," she said finally.

That was truly what bothered her, he reflected. It was very un-B'Elanna to suggest abandoning Kessel; this was just a result of being knocked flat. It was crystal clear to him. They'd been on the surface and everything was fine; one mosquito bite later and she was fighting for her life in sickbay. Now she was stable, but weaker than he had ever seen her.

He sighed. Now he was just the armchair psychologist to everyone, wasn't he? Here he was, ascribing hidden motives to everyone around him. Maybe he was overthinking things. Maybe he ought to just let someone else handle Kessel and just see to his wife.

It was completely understandable why B'Elanna would want him to stay by her side. All the same, that entailed a price he didn't want to pay. A brief image flickered into his mind: Kessel, no longer in uniform, talking to someone else. _Yeah, Lieutenant Paris hasn't changed. He got me into this mess and promised he'd help me get out of it. But when it came time to actually put in the work, he dodged out of it. _

That was what he would have done before: duck out and leave someone else holding the bag.

Not this time.

"B'Elanna," he said with all the sympathy he could muster, "I know you're sick, but I can't just leave her. I helped get her into this. It's something I just...I _have _to do."

She tilted her head at him and her eyes flashed. "Why?" she demanded again.

Tom paused, struggling for words. They wouldn't come. How was he supposed to defend Kessel if he couldn't even defend this decision to his own wife?

"B'Elanna, come on," he began. "You and I...we're going to have a baby. When she gets big enough to ask about our pasts, what am I supposed to tell her? You, you've got an answer. You joined the Maquis because you wanted to defend your home colony. To do the right thing. Me? I joined up to booze it up and fight. I want to be able to tell her I did the right thing, too."

"You don't have to defend yourself to anyone. You've turned yourself around," B'Elanna answered, the anger waning in her tone.

"I feel like I'm not all the way there yet," he said. "And if I don't do this...," he stopped, still feeling strangled and inarticulate, "if I don't do this...maybe I never will get there. I don't like this whole witch-hunt thing. It's wrong. Kessel isn't Khan Noonien Singh. All she wants to do is work in the biolab and scan life forms and dissect things and do, I don't know...whatever else biologists do. And telling her she can't do that because she's an Augment is like saying you can't be chief engineer because you're half Klingon, or saying Harry can't be operations officer because he's Asian, or saying I can't fly the ship because I have blond hair. There used to be rules like that, too. It was wrong then and it's wrong now. They've got all kinds of pretty reasons for it, but it's just discrimination. I can't be part of it. I _won't _be part of it. I'll be here for you. I'm not going to abandon you, and I'm sorry I wasn't here...but I have to do this, too."

Silence held sway for a few moments. Tom tensed. He could barely make out her eyes in the darkness, but he could still see the angry sparks in them.

"Well," B'Elanna said in a businesslike tone that was too clipped and strained to be really businesslike, "then I guess you'd better go to her."

"B'Elanna?"

"_Go." _Her voice clotted in anger. "Just go to your genetically enhanced superbabe. If she's more important to you than me...just go."

"It's not like that," he parried, searching for words. "B'Elanna, you're sick, you're not thinking straight, this isn't--,"

"Tom? Get out. Just get out."

"B'Elanna--,"

"_Just get out!" _

He swallowed, feeling fear and dread mix in his stomach. There would be no meeting of the minds today. Sometimes a tactical retreat was the best option. Even so, he felt misunderstood and ill used as he left. How could B'Elanna, of all people, not understand?

It was easy to see her side: she was sick, she was weak, and she couldn't stand being in either state. It was just temporary. But even so, he hadn't planned to do _anything _with Kessel other than defend her. The accusation stung, and rejection stung worse.

In the meantime, she needed to cool down, and he needed someplace to stay the night. Only one place came to mind. He gathered up what remained of his dignity and headed to the turbolift. In a few minutes, he stood in front of Harry's door, wondering if he would answer. Maybe he was asleep. B'Elanna had looked awful. Even Kessel, with her heavy-duty immune system, had been knocked for a loop. Poor Harry had only the standard-issue human immune system, without Klingon antibodies or genetic enhancement to help carry the load. Still, the doc would have kept him in sickbay if things were that bad. The cell infusion therapy had worked wonders. Funny no one had ever thought of it before.

Then again, humans had shied away from genetic science for a few centuries. Maybe it took someone like Kessel, who owed her existence to those forbidden techniques, to think of its uses. After all, B'Elanna was okay, as was their daughter. In the end, that was what mattered, wasn't it?

He started, suddenly aware that he had been standing in front of Harry's door for a few minutes, lost in thought. A rueful grin came to his face. When had he ever been this philosophical? It wasn't part of the whole Captain Proton, Action Hero thing. A few moments later, the door chimed.

"Come," said a rusty, tired voice. Tom started forward. The lights were down but brightened as he came in. Harry was sitting on his couch, looking pale, jaundiced, and exhausted. Heavy dark bags below his eyes added to the effect. He was going to need those few days off.

"Harry," Tom said. "How are you feeling?"

Harry shrugged. "Tired," he said, which looked to Tom like a massive understatement.

"I, ah...," Tom began. "I really hate to bother you, but...," he stopped. "B'Elanna's mad at me."

Harry nodded slowly. "You know my couch is your couch," he quipped, and smiled. "What is it this time?"

Tom sighed and explained the situation: Kessel's actual genetic status, her idea for cell infusion therapy, her unmasking, the charges, and B'Elanna's poor reaction to his announcement. Harry listened attentively, seeming interested. He'd been interested in Kessel.

_Funny, _Tom thought. _Here I thought I just might have a normal woman who might work out with Harry. Turned out she would've been one of the people who almost blew up the world a couple hundred years ago. That sure worked out great, didn't it? _But Harry didn't seem put off by the thought.

"Wow," he said. "Kessel's an Augment." It wasn't a question, just an observation.

Tom nodded.

"Can I see those rules you pulled up?"

Tom shrugged. It took only a moment to pull it up again. There it was, in black and white, Starfleet's only sanctioned discrimination. Harry took a few moments to read it, attentive despite his illness.

"Wow," he mused. "Old reg."

"Yeah, it's pretty old," Tom said.

"You can tell. It requires a council of officers."

Tom blinked. "Well, yeah...what does that have to do with it?"

Harry stifled another cough. "Law changes," he explained. "Under modern regs, it's mostly the captain's call. This regulation is a lot older. There was a time when Starfleet tried having things more split up, with councils of officers sitting in like juries. The idea was to spread out power and make sure captains didn't get _too_ powerful. It didn't really work out well in practice, so Starfleet came out with new regs putting the captains back in charge of hearings. But this law is so old, they never bothered changing it."

"You sound like you know about it."

Harry chuckled weakly. "Yep. I took a couple of courses in legal history at the Academy. It's sort of interesting."

That didn't surprise him somehow. Harry was a bookworm.

"All the cases are really old," Harry continued. "I think you may have a good shot at beating this. I mean, she's a Eugenics War Augment. That actually helps you."

Tom tilted his head. "How do you figure?"

"She was born the way she is," Harry explained. "Most Starfleet officers would agree that discriminating against someone for being born the way they are is wrong."

Tom chuckled sourly. "Will Captain Janeway?"

Harry turned and eyed him. Even sick and pale and yellowish, he still looked like he had made some leap Tom hadn't.

"You don't have to convince Captain Janeway," he said. "If she follows these rules by the book – and I suppose she will – she is going to preside over the hearings, as a judge. But these regs require a council of officers, and _they're _the people you have to convince. That's what you've got to do. Get the jury to see it that way. Point out other rules against discrimination. Point out Starfleet's dedication to making room for people who are different. That sort of thing."

"Good idea," Tom mused.

Harry waited a beat. "Are you going to want some help?" he asked.

He hadn't been expecting that question. "I guess," he said. "But, I mean, Harry, come on, you're sick. I don't want to impose on you any more than I am already."

Harry shrugged. "I have a few days off anyway," he said. "I'm not going to run a marathon anytime soon, and I doubt I'll be up to playing Buster Kincaid, but I can research stuff on the computer for you."

"Ahhhh," Tom said. "Sure. Thanks. I can use all the help I can get."

Harry smiled. "Not a problem," he said. "I can help. I mean, it's not like Kessel tried to take over the ship or anything. And besides...," he trailed off.

Tom didn't need to be told what the besides was: Harry liked Kessel, and the fact that she was an Augment didn't seem to have impacted that. He supposed those fetching green eyes were still on Harry's mind. Did it matter? Not really.

"I don't mean to be a bad host," Harry said, "but I'm beat." He gestured at the couch. "Make yourself at home. Replicator's there if you need it. You know, if you need a uniform or anything in the morning."

Tom smiled uncomfortably. "Sure," he said, and watched Harry go back into his bedroom. Then he slipped off his boots, took off his jacket, and lay back on the couch. He was still a little nettled that B'Elanna had reacted the way she had, but she'd come around. She always did.

Harry's offer of help was a welcome bonus. He wasn't sure what to do. The last thing he wanted to do was ladle more stuff onto Harry's plate – the guy had enough to deal with right now. But Harry clearly wanted to help. And if it scored him a few good-guy points with Kessel – so what? No harm there.

B'Elanna hadn't approved; Harry had. One up, one down. He yawned as the lights went down. So much had happened, and he still had a long ways to go. Heck, he hadn't even told Captain Janeway he was Kessel's defense counsel. But there would be no more answers tonight. Those lay ahead.

Tom rolled over onto his side, shifted a little, and went to sleep.


	8. Legal Help

_Author's note: Here's another chapter. Things have been busy, and I've been trying to avoid Kessel turning into a Mary Sue (not so easy with a non-psycho Augment, since by definition they're stronger, smarter, tougher, they can eat an entire package of Oreos and not gain an ounce, they can get away with wearing those jeans, et cetera.) Served up for your reading pleasure, Paris-Janeway arguments, miniskirts, and Tom's expertise in 20th century sci-fi.  
_

The bridge was beginning to pick up steam. It was a few minutes before shift change. The gamma-shifters were getting ready to end their shifts and hand over their stations to the senior crew. Tom had gotten here early. He needed to speak with Captain Janeway. Hopefully, he might get her before she took the conn.

The gamma-shift flight controller looked over at him. Tom shook his head and waved him off. "Just a few minutes," he said. A moment later, Captain Janeway emerged from her readyroom with a cup of coffee in hand. That was good; she was a lot more tractable after her morning jolt of coffee.

"Good morning, Lieutenant," Janeway said pleasantly. "I hear B'Elanna and Harry are out of sickbay."

Tom nodded. "Could I speak to you for a moment?"

The captain nodded. "Of course," she said.

"In private?" he persisted.

She gave him a curious look. "All right," she said, and turned around. "In my readyroom."

Tom followed her in. She took her seat and gestured him to the chair in front of her desk. "What's on your mind, Tom?"

Tom paused, swallowed, and wondered how to phrase this. "It's about the council," he said.

"What about it?" Janeway asked, her eyes narrowing just a bit. Their argument had not been so easily forgotten, apparently. Well, if he was going to get chewed out over this, it certainly wasn't the first time. Better to just get it out.

"I'm not going to be able to serve on it," Tom said.

Captain Janeway paused, and her eyebrow went up. "Lieutenant Paris," she said coolly, "I thought we had discussed this."

"I'll be taking part in the hearing," he said.. "As Ensign Kessel's defense counsel."

Silence stretched into a few long moments in which he could almost feel the temperature dropping. He felt his palms begin to sweat. Captain Janeway's death glare was dreaded and feared among the crew. Even so, he sat up straight, refusing to bend.

"Defense counsel?" Janeway asked icily.

"Yes, captain," he said. "She _is _entitled to defense counsel, isn't she? The regs say she is."

The captain stared at him. "Of course she is," she said frostily. "Mr. Paris, I'm well aware of the regulations. I don't appreciate you trying to circumvent my decisions."

Tom paused. This had to go carefully. "I'm not," he said. "I'm still part of the hearing. I'm just taking a different role."

"Mr. Paris," Janeway snapped, "I told you before. You are a senior officer on this ship. When I ask you to do your duty, I expect you to do it."

"With all due respect, Captain, I _am _doing my duty."

"By trying to sneak out of something you don't agree with?" Janeway asked harshly.

"I'm not," Tom said. "Captain, isn't it our duty as senior officers to see that justice is done? Isn't _that _the meaning of a court-martial?"

"This isn't a court-martial. I told you that already," Janeway said, and paused. "You've done a great deal to turn yourself around, Tom. You've earned the trust of your co-workers. You've earned my trust. Yet on this, you balk and fight me like a sulky teenager. Why?"

"Permission to speak freely in answering that question?" Tom asked.

Janeway scowled. "Go ahead," she said, sounding angry and disgusted.

"You know who Captain Jean-Luc Picard is, right?"

"Of course," Janeway said. "Captain of the Enterprise."

"He said something once. He said that the first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth. Scientific truth, historical truth...or personal truth. That it was the guiding principle of Starfleet. That you didn't deserve to wear the uniform if you couldn't hold that up. It spoke to me. After all, that's a lesson I learned the hard way. After the Moneans, I told you that serving under your command had changed me for the better. That's true. And I can tell you're not happy with me, and you think I'm trying to get out of this council. I assure you that's not the case. You showed me an example...you showed me principles. But it comes down to what Captain Picard said: our first duty is to the truth...and sometimes, that's our personal truth."

"I believe that Erika Kessel has a case to stay in Starfleet. I believe that discrimination is wrong, and I think it's a betrayal of Starfleet's principles. We can pretty it up and rationalize it all we like. We can come up with great-sounding reasons by the terabyte. We can point to Khan Noonien Singh. None of that makes it right. That's my personal truth. I have to stay true to that, and if your opinion of me suffers for it, that's a price I'll have to pay. I've tried going the other way. Believe me, captain. It isn't worth it."

He had her attention; he could tell that. Her eyes were fixed on his, not wavering an instant. She still wasn't happy with him; he could tell. Her face was hard and not giving much away. All the same, he could see her eyes soften thoughtfully. Well, at least he wouldn't be serving time in the brig for this one.

"I see, Lieutenant," she said firmly. "Very well, then. I'm not sure how you intend to approach this case, but if Ensign Kessel wants you as her defense counsel, then so be it. Mr. Tuvok will be presenting the case for Ensign Kessel's removal. We'll be convening a council of officers, and I will be overseeing the hearing. I'll see that you receive all the documents associated with the case."

Paris nodded slowly. "How long until the hearing?" he asked. Inside, he was nervous but didn't want to show it. Tuvok presenting the case? That wasn't good. He would be a formidable adversary.

Janeway eyed him carefully, but there was a bit more respect in her gaze than before. "Seventy-two hours, Mr. Paris."

He nodded. Having a deadline made it more real to him; this was something he would have to do in the next few days. This was clearly going to take up a lot of time.

It seemed Captain Janeway knew this as well. "You'll have to prepare a defense, of course. We'll assign Ensign Culhane to cover your shifts for the next few days."

The name made him wince; Culhane had been bucking for his job ever since he'd gotten a taste of it back during Tom's thirty-day sentence. Tom had privately loathed him ever since. _Wouldn't it be ironic if I kept Kessel in Starfleet but lost my own job out of it? _

But of course he couldn't _say _anything like that, even if he thought Culhane was a little weasel. Instead, he smiled pleasantly. "Of course, captain," he said ever so politely.

Her eyes remained on him, probing and searching. Did she approve? Was she still angry? It was hard to tell. "Mr. Chakotay, please summon Ensign Culhane to the helm."

_And I hope he steers the ship into an asteroid or something, _Tom thought.

"Also, Harry is going to be working with me," he added.

Captain Janeway nodded. "He's on medical leave," she pointed out. "Very well, then. Dismissed."

Paris turned and headed back to the holodeck. It was time to get his game face on and plan what he was going to do. The first thing was to go get his faithful legal assistant. Harry was in his quarters, and let him right in. He looked a little better after a night's sleep.

"You're off early," he said pleasantly.

"Captain Janeway dismissed me from helm duty until the hearing," Tom replied. "For the next few days, I'm a lawyer, not a helmsman."

"Then we ought to collect our client," Harry said agreeably.

"No, you think?" Tom said, grinning. "Computer, locate Ensign Kessel."

"Ensign Kessel is in holodeck two," the computer announced.

"You feel up to a walk?" Tom asked.

Harry shrugged. "Yeah, all right," he said, and got up.

Tom watched him carefully, trying not to make his concern too obvious. There wasn't any nice way to say it: Harry still looked awful. Even so, he seemed game.

Tom tapped his combadge. "Paris to Kessel."

"Go ahead," came the response.

"We need to talk. Computer says you're in the holodeck. Mind some visitors?"

"No," Kessel said, "that's fine."

It took only a few minutes to reach the holodeck. Tom stopped and opened his mouth, about to announce himself. Before he got a word out, the holodeck doors opened smoothly. He closed his mouth and grinned sheepishly.

_I hate how she does that, _he thought.

"How did she...?" Harry trailed off.

"Augments can hear a lot better than we can," Tom said. "She probably heard us coming out of the turbolift."

They proceeded forward into the holodeck. The doors hummed closed behind them. Apparently, Kessel wanted them to join her in whatever holosim she was running. Tom stopped and glanced around. This was something he'd seen before. Gray halls held obnoxiously bright red doors. Holographic crewmen ran back and forth, wearing a uniform much different than his own: red and gold shirts over black pants. And the ladies were wearing miniskirt uniforms in the same color. Painted on a wall in block lettering were the words _USS ENTERPRISE NCC-1701._

A goofy grin crossed his face.

"The _Enterprise!" _Harry said, grinning himself.

For a moment Tom wondered why Kessel had picked this holosimulation to run. Then again, he had a pretty good idea of why. Before they could say more, a red door _wssshed _open, and Kessel strolled out.

Tom Paris had always had an eye for the ladies. Even now that he was married, he still looked. He wouldn't cheat and he loved B'Elanna, but he was still married, not dead. Looking and doing were two different things. There was true art in a woman's form, he believed. It wasn't sexism, not really, although he hadn't ever been able to explain it without getting slapped. He knew women had brains – Captain Janeway and B'Elanna had taught him that lesson well. But brains and beauty weren't mutually exclusive. Every woman had _some _element of beauty. You just had to find it.

He had often thought that modern Starfleet uniforms tried to make beautiful female bodies into sexless neuters. A jacket that served to muffle a woman's chest; pants that cloaked lovely legs and curved hips in boring black serge, hideously ugly shoes for men and women alike – no, Starfleet uniforms of today did precious few favors for the female figure.

They could've learned a _lot_ from the past.

Kessel wore a miniskirt uniform in science blue, with the standard black nylons and boots of the era. Her combadge seemed anachronistic and out of place where the patch should have gone. She pulled off the ensemble pretty well, he noticed. She had a good figure. A lot better than he'd thought, actually. Apparently those long-ago scientists who designed the Augments had similar ideas to his own on how they should look.

_Eyes above the neckline, _he told himself. _ You're a Starfleet officer and a married man, you're her counsel and she's your client, and counsel does not stare at a client's thighs...no matter how attractively presented they may be._

Next to him, Harry swallowed, smiling nervously. Tom sighed. He knew Harry. Harry thought Kessel was cute, and yes, that uniform was sexy. But you had to be cool with women, and Tom found himself suddenly dreading the thought that Harry was going to do something like drool or get flustered or something. He just wasn't smooth with the ladies. Tom knew without looking that his friend was breaking a sweat.

"Hi," Tom said.

"_Guten Morgen," _Kessel said pleasantly, and tilted her head curiously at Harry. "I thought you were still in sickbay."

"Um," Harry said. "No, no. I'm out. I'm going to help Tom with the case. You know, research. Stuff like that."

Kessel brightened and nodded. "Good," she said. "Glad to have you on board."

"You look nice," Harry added.

_Ack, Harry, _Tom thought. _First off, we're here to work. Secondly, you're better off not mentioning the dress. Cause if it comes out the wrong way you can crash and burn right there. She's an Augment, I assure you she knows her hemline barely covers her butt._

Yet Kessel didn't seem offended. "Thank you," she said, smiling. Tom got the distinct idea that Kessel didn't mind Harry's appreciative glance.

"Whatcha doing here?" Harry asked.

Kessel's mouth quirked. "Visiting family," she quipped. A moment later, the turbolift doors opened and several men came out. They wore red jumpsuits with gold trim rather than the old-fashioned Starfleet uniforms and carried stolen phasers. A similarly dressed woman walked up to the three Starfleet officers.

"This way," she demanded. "Obey me or you will die at the hands of my lord, Khan."

"Why?" Kessel said, not moving. "_Sie koennen dieses Schiff nicht stehlen. Starfleet wird das niemals zulassen." _

The woman looked blank and waved her phaser. "Stop your nonsense! This way! Or I will kill you all where you stand." Her eyes hardened cruelly at her captives.

"Freeze program," Kessel said, and the woman and her cohorts froze without a word. Kessel looked at her defenders over for a moment.

"That's wrong," she said thoughtfully. "Kati spoke twelve languages. She would have understood German. Nor was she ever that violent. She usually preferred letting Khan be the brutal one. He was the overlord, after all."

Tom blinked, remembering she had mentioned something about her sister and the Enterprise. Now that he looked, it was plain as day. The two women had the same dark hair, pale skin, and green eyes. The planes of their faces were very alike.

"Your sister?" he said.

Kessel shrugged. "Biologically, yes," she said.

"How do you know?" Harry asked curiously.

"When Khan's people were arrested after they tried to take over, they took fingerprints, pictures, and DNA samples, just like any other prisoner," Kessel explained. "The DNA scan is still in Starfleet databases."

Tom nodded. They took a lot more than that, but Kessel didn't need to hear about that. "So what were you doing here?" he asked.

Kessel shrugged. "I played first as an Augment and then as a Starfleet officer," she said.

Tom sighed. Sure, Kessel had the same right to play on the holodeck as anybody else did, but this wasn't helping. "The idea here is that we're trying to get you to be both. Stuff like this...doesn't necessarily help. It can get taken the wrong way."

"Oh," Kessel said, and seemed surprised. Tom surmised that she hadn't really thought about it that way. Yes, most holodeck simulations were private, but the command crew _could _look in at them if they wanted to. Tuvok was good; he wasn't going to miss showing Kessel using the holodeck to buddy up to her more violent siblings.

Then again, maybe this was something he could use. "What happened when you played as an Augment?" he asked.

Kessel opened her hands. "I stopped. I didn't see the point."

_Interesting, _Tom thought. "What do you mean?"

"I don't see why Khan wanted to take over the _Enterprise,_" she explained. "He should have known that he couldn't do what he wanted to. The crew would fight him, just as they did. Even if he had succeeded, he would have had only one ship. Did he really think Starfleet would just let him waltz around the quadrant, destroying whatever he liked? They'd have sent every other starship after him and blown the _Enterprise _to shreds rather than let him have it." She eyed him for a moment curiously. "There have _always _been a lot more of you than there are of us."

She was right on both counts. Starfleet took the possibility of a rogue ship very seriously. If Khan had taken the _Enterprise, _Starfleet would have blown it away rather than let him terrorize the Federation. After all, Captain Janeway had been willing to risk the destruction of the ship rather than let it fall into the wrong hands. Heck, when they first ended up in the Delta Quadrant she'd risked it every other week.

Other things she'd said interested him, too.

"There are more of us than of you," he mused.

"Forty billion of you. Forty-eight of us," she replied. "On this ship, one of me and a hundred and forty-five of you. We've always been hopelessly outnumbered."

That was interesting. The Eugenics Wars had left its mark on human history. Khan and his ilk had been viewed as grave threats to humanity, so grave that anyone like him wasn't allowed a role in society. Yet Kessel seemed to think of _humans _as a threat, and the _Augments _as the ones threatened.

And how wrong was she? After all, once she'd been unmasked, Captain Janeway had begun making plans for booting her out of Starfleet. Rules on the books had demanded that very fate for anyone whose genes had been tinkered with.

"If you feel that way, then why did you join Starfleet?" he asked.

Kessel sighed. "I was born on Earth, too," she said plaintively. "I grew up around humans. For better or for worse, the Federation is my society, too."

_Bingo, _Paris thought. _Good stuff. Great. This is what people need to see and hear. _

"Is this the only sim you've been running?" he asked.

"No," Kessel said, and looked blank. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"Tuvok's going to be presenting the case against you," Tom informed her. "He might just quote the rules and say that's all there is to it. But he's smarter than that. The only way we're going to win this is by challenging the rule itself. We have to show the rule is outdated, and that you're not a threat. Now, if you've been running holosims where Khan wins and hacks Jim Kirk's arms off or Soong's Augments dissolve Jon Archer into goo or something like that...," he smiled, trying to make it easy. "That doesn't help our situation here."

Kessel seemed vaguely offended. "I've never dissolved anyone into goo," she said. "It's not easy to break down cell walls like that. They're very hardy, all things considered. And you'd have to break down millions of cells. It's hard to dissolve people."

_Only you would answer that by explaining the science behind dissolving people, _Tom thought.

"Glad to hear it," Harry quipped.

"What were you running?"

"An...adaptation," Kessel hedged. "It's from an old 20th century movie – the old kind, on a screen, -- which is in turn adapted from a novel. I'll show it to you if you want to see it. It was considered one of the best science fiction movies of the late 20th century. It was called _Blade Runner, _and the novel it's from was--,"

Tom grinned suddenly. "_Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, _by Philip K. Dick," he finished.

"Classic," Harry added. He had read the book before, but Tom had introduced him to the movie. "There's a reason both of them are in the ship's database."

A look of surprise crossed Kessel's face. Tom found it somewhat enjoyable.

"Didn't think us puny humans would recognize it?" he asked.

"I didn't say that," Kessel said defensively. "I...just don't think you quite saw it the way I did."

Tom chuckled. "Probably not. But let me guess: your favorite character was Rachael. The android, or replicant, who thought she was human."

"Well, yes," Kessel hedged. Tom grinned. She hadn't thought he'd heard of either of them. In fact, science fiction had been one of his favorites as a kid.

Another idea occurred to him. "Interesting, isn't it? In both of those, the replicants were kept at arm's length, not allowed on Earth. They were killed if they did. From what I recall, most of the Augments _were _hunted down and executed after the Eugenics Wars."

"That's not all," Harry put in. "Even if you go back to _Frankenstein, _by Mary Shelley, you see the same thing. Frankenstein and the monster ended up in a pretty ugly struggle."

"True," Kessel said stiffly, "but it doesn't help me much. All those stories suggest that humanity can create...," she paused and clearly struggled for words. "Augments, replicants, androids, monsters...manufactured biological life. You can create us, but you can't share the world with us."

Tom grinned. Confidence filled him now. He had a good idea of where he wanted to go. "Exactly so."

Kessel shifted nervously. "How does that _help?" _

"Because," Tom said. "We like to think we're better than that." He gestured around the halls of the simulated old ship. "Even back then, we wanted to think we'd grown beyond such things. That we'd really learned something from everything we've been through. If I went out there and grabbed four or five crewmen and asked them if they thought humanity _should _be like that, that that's how we _ought _to be, they'd be horrified. We _want_ to be better than that. But we're not always successful. People need to hear that. They need to ask the question. _Are _we ready to share the universe? We claim to be. We share it with everybody else. But now that we've committed to that principle, we need to carry it out. Augments and all. Otherwise, we aren't any better than Rick Deckard, shooting an unarmed woman in the back – for what? Because she dared to overstep her bounds. Because she wanted us to share the world – or the universe -- with her-- and we wouldn't."

Only after he had finished did he realize he was waving one hand in the air admonishingly. Both Harry and Kessel were staring at him. Surprise was etched on both of their faces.

"What?" Tom asked.

"That's quite the argument," Harry said. "You've thought this out."

He hadn't thought it out, not really. It had come from the heart. He hadn't thought of any of it. But Tuvok would surely figure out looking at _Frankenstein _and other fictional examples of artificial life. He'd have to figure out a way to negate that. Without being arrogant, he thought that he'd done a pretty good job of it. Turn it around, and ask if Starfleet officers thought they could do better than that.

"Thanks," Tom said. He found the appreciative, thoughtful look on Kessel's face to be a better reward. Harry had faith in him. Harry always did; that was one of Harry's strong points. Kessel? He wasn't so sure. She'd given him the idea that she thought he was a dumb flyboy doing this for a lark. From the look on her face, she was reconsidering that. And something more, too: hope.

_Tell you what, Kessel. Just wear that dress for Harry once or twice and we'll call it even. _

"We don't have a lot of time," Tom said. "The hearing will be in seventy-two hours. So let's get--,"

The door chimed, indicating that someone was outside the holodeck.

"Come," he said, and then thought maybe he should have asked Kessel, since this was her holodeck time. He glanced at her. She simply shrugged, apparently willing to let him take the lead. Odd, in a way: Augments were supposed to enslave humanity and kill people and things like that. Then again, he had to remember that Kessel was both younger and lower-ranked than he was. Her deference to a superior officer wouldn't have been surprising in anyone else. That, he supposed, was what people needed to think about.

Seven of Nine entered and looked around in imperious puzzlement for a few moments. "I did not intend to disturb your holodeck time," he said. "Ensign Kessel, I wish to speak with you."

Kessel raised an eyebrow in puzzlement. "Me?"

"Yes. I understand that you are an Augment."

Before Kessel could say anything, Tom jumped in. "Don't answer that," he instructed the ensign. "Seven, look. I'm her counsel. If it's about the case, you talk to me."

Seven turned and gave him what he thought of as the Official Seven Haughty Look, Patent Pending. "I possess capabilities that many humans do not. I am interested in speaking with another who has such abilities and her reasons for concealment."

Tom sighed. _Because she understands finesse a lot better than you ever will, that's why. _"Not now," he said. "_After _the hearing, maybe. Until the hearing, I say no."

"And who are you to make this determination?" Seven demanded.

"Her counsel. I have the right. Go look it up," Tom informed her.

Seven's lip curled back. She hadn't expected to get any sort of pushback, and it probably hadn't occurred to her that blabbing before the hearing was a dumb move. "I am willing to offer assistance in return," she said, sounding oddly sulky and petulant.

"What kind of assistance?" Tom asked.

"Legal research," Seven said promptly. "I am capable of searching the ship's database for relevant legal material. I believe that this can provide substantial assistance to your defense."

Kessel took a step backwards, and Tom remembered that she'd commented that she didn't like Seven. "Why would you do this?" she asked, a bit distrustfully.

"As I said," Seven replied, "I wish to speak with someone else who has...an outside view on humanity. For the ship to waste your talents because of this regulation is...inefficient. There is also an element of self-interest which I will not hide. Starfleet regulations require your dismissal because of your genetic enhancement. Starfleet regulations also permit Starfleet officers to destroy the Borg wherever they encounter them."

Kessel's lips twitched. "_You _are in no danger on this ship," she said, with a little more venom in her voice than he had expected.

Seven paused. "Yes. On _this_ ship," she specified. "Captain Janeway has elected to assist me. If we do return to the Alpha Quadrant, other Starfleet officers may not be so compassionate. Ensign Kessel, I am aware that your situation is no doubt...stressful. I would not wish such a fate on anyone. However, I must point out, whatever the result of this hearing, no one in Starfleet would be allowed to simply _kill _you.. So long as I remain Borg, I do not enjoy such protection."

Now it was Paris's turn to be thoughtful. Yeah, when you broke it down, Seven had a point. Starfleet officers were allowed to use any means necessary against the Borg, and so a Starfleet officer _could, _theoretically, attack Seven and point to that order as justification.

Of course, when that order had been issued, the Borg had been a threat. They still were. Then, nobody had ever thought a Borg drone who had been in the Collective so long could ever be returned to humanity. But then again, when the ban on Augments had been adopted, nobody had ever thought that an Augment might be a scientist who preferred working quietly in the biolab to enslaving her less gifted shipmates and going on a war of conquest.

It was his job to make everybody think about that.

This could be tough going. Seven probably only wanted to help, and she could sift databases better than most people. She didn't have a lot of heart, though, and this was going to be won through heart. Besides, she stressed a lot of people on the ship out, and that included Kessel.

"Do you wish my assistance?" Seven asked, looking at Kessel.

Kessel glanced at him, seeking guidance.

Tom swallowed nervously. "As your counsel," he murmured, "I would suggest taking any help we can get. We're up against a Vulcan, you know."

Kessel eyed the former drone suspiciously "All right," she said, slowly and unwillingly.

"All right," Tom said. "Well, then, we have our work cut out for us. We've got a lot to do. We have to plan our strategy, we've got to do our research, and we've got to figure out what Tuvok's going to do and what we can do to counter it. Let's get to work."


	9. Meet the Parents

_Author's note:_Stories

_Here's another chapter. I had wanted to emphasize one issue before we got to the trial scene. So here we are! _

It was time to get to work, Paris thought. Time to settle in and prepare a defense. Harry's quarters had computer terminals and enough room to work. He didn't want to use his own, not with B'Elanna on edge, and Seven lived in the cargo bay, which lacked a little on creature comforts.

_Okay, _Paris thought. _Time to take charge. _

"All right," he said. "Let's get things rolling. We've got a defense to plan. Kessel, why don't you get back in uniform, then we'll head down to Harry's quarters."

Kessel nodded and left for another part of the holosim where she could change in privacy. Harry watched her go, clearly admiring the minidress. Seven watched her too, but Tom figured it was more curiosity than carnality. A few moments later, Kessel returned in uniform.

The holodeck doors opened, and they proceeded out. Tom found himself leading up the parade. Kessel and Harry were walking together behind him, with Seven in the back. That had sort of surprised him; he didn't think she would play second fiddle too easily. Then again, he allowed, she'd surprised him by volunteering to help at all. He supposed that said good things for her readjustment to humanity.

He was trying to get a plan straight as he walked. He'd never been much of a bookworm, and that was worrying him. On the other hand, between Harry, Kessel, and Seven, the defense team had bookworms to spare. They could pull up all the stuff he needed. Then everybody would have to plan out strategy. They'd have to figure out where Tuvok was likely to go and develop counter-strategies. He'd have to present everything, and he'd have to lead.

Other thoughts occurred to him. He'd have to keep an eye on Kessel. Oh, he didn't think she would do anything violent, or steal the Delta Flyer and hijack the ship – she really didn't have anywhere else to go. But she'd coped for the duration of the journey by keeping back and staying out of the spotlight. She wouldn't have that opportunity anymore. He wanted to keep her from doing something like running Khan scenarios on the holodeck – stuff that could easily get taken the wrong way. And somebody had to keep her spirits up. She was stiff and reserved, and that could easily be mistaken for arrogance and superiority.

Throwing a glance over his shoulder suggested that Harry would be the right fellow to task with morale duties. They were talking about music; comparing their tastes in classical music. Apparently, Kessel and Harry had similar musical tastes. There was some hideous irony right there: this whole thing had started partially because he'd wanted to see if he could maneuver them into hitting it off. Well, he'd gotten that, hadn't he?

All the same, he was the front man. This was his shindig. He had good people, but in the end he'd be answerable for it.

_Heck of a way to get my first command, _Tom thought with a grin. _No flyboy tactics or Captain Proton stuff. Instead, I get to out-argue a Vulcan. Lucky me. _

Just before he led his merry band into the turbolift, his combadge twittered. "Janeway to Paris."

He tapped it. "Go ahead, captain."

There was no anger in her voice. It was all business today. "Mr. Paris, we've been able to establish a datastream with Earth. We anticipate it'll be able to hold for at least half an hour. Possibly more. In the interests of fairness, I'm going to allot both you and Mr. Tuvok fifteen minutes each. Research, voice, data – you can have whatever you want, but you've got fifteen minutes. Report to Astrometrics at 1045."

"Yes, captain. Thank you," Paris said.

For just a moment, he was frustrated: he'd been trying to set a course, and now this. That passed after a moment. Captain Janeway had to deal with unexpected things all the time. Often they were unexpected things that shot at them, too. This was nothing by comparison. The question came to his mouth just as it formed in his head.

"Okay, guys," he said. "You heard that. Fifteen minutes with Earth. What's the best use of that time?"

Harry took out a PADD and began typing away. "We can get the latest updates on legal materials," he pointed out. "I can design the query now, so all we have to do is transmit."

"I would also seek out any legal cases involving members of enemy races who have attempted to enter Starfleet," Seven said abruptly.

Tom tilted his head. "_Enemy _races?"

"Lieutenant Torres is half Klingon," Seven clarified. "The Federation spent a long time at war with the Klingon Empire. Would she have been permitted to enter Starfleet a hundred years ago?"

Tom touched his chin thoughtfully. "Good question," he admitted. "I'm not sure."

"Likewise," Seven continued. "Jean-Luc Picard was assimilated by the Borg. He was permitted to return to his Starfleet career. There is no denying that he _was _a Borg drone, even if for a short period of time. If there was any sort of legal hearing regarding him, we should examine that."

Harry's eyes lit up. "I remember there was a case on the _Enterprise _about ten years ago or so, where a crewman said he was part Vulcan and turned out to be part Romulan."

Tom chewed his lip thoughtfully. "That's a good line of reasoning," he said. All the same, he felt like something was missing. Something else, just on the tip of his tongue. Then he had it. "You know...I know what's going to help from Earth."

"What?" Harry asked.

He turned and pointed at the Augment. "Your family."

Kessel seemed shocked. "My family? How?"

"Because," Tom said. "I want to know more about what _they _did."

Kessel drew herself up. "I do _not _want them involved," she said.

"They already are," Tom said. "Look. Arik Soong was kind of a mad scientist. Maybe a well-intentioned one, but let's face it, he tried to do everything all on his own. He shipped his Augments off to his own little colony and raised them in isolation, all by himself. But your dad didn't. He found families for the others. Other people helped out in other ways, too. A lot of people, and they all took some real risks. People don't rally behind a mad scientist like that." He paused, remembering the interview. "When I said it was a conspiracy, you got kind of stiff." _Stiffer than usual, _he mentally added. "And you said..."

"Conspiracy, if you like," Kessel supplied helpfully. "These were people who believed we should have the same choices in life as anyone else."

_Between you and Seven, we're not even going to need PADDs. We'll just have you two run back anything we need to remember, _Paris thought. "Yeah," he said. "I want to know why. Your dad was in the center of the whole deal, but he had a lot of help. He got people to follow him. I want to hear what he's got to say."

Kessel took a step forward. "Lieutenant Paris," she said, "I _don't _want my parents to get in trouble. They could lose everything – their jobs, their professional reputations...they could to go to jail. I really don't want that to happen."

"I know," Paris said. "It's going to come out one way or the other, though. Think about it, though. He repaired the Augments so their brains worked right. All of you were raised around humans, and it doesn't seem like any of you were raised to believe you ought to be our evil overlords. Obviously he intended for you to blend into society, not take it over. I want to know more about why he did what he did."

Kessel swallowed. "I don't like it," she said.

"Besides, anything to do with your defense is confidential," he continued. "Tuvok can't have it, and Captain Janeway can't have it."

"Unless you introduce it at trial," Kessel said.

Paris shrugged. "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," he said. "What are you so afraid of, anyway?"

Kessel took a moment to consider her words. "My father is...a rather stubborn man," she said. "He takes his moral beliefs very seriously. He _will _admit what he did with me, because he doesn't think he did anything wrong. He...has strong feelings about life. He'll stand up and tell you, or Tuvok, or Captain Janeway, or Starfleet Command. He won't back down, even if it would be more sensible for him to keep his mouth shut. My mother is quieter about it...but no more yielding."

Harry glanced up. "We gotta get to Astrometrics," he said.

"Okay," Paris said, and steered his little band to the turbolift. As it hummed upwards, he pondered. This was actually a good sign. Captain Janeway still seemed to be ticked off at the Augment ensign, but Paris thought that her statement was completely true. She wanted this hearing to be fair. At least it wouldn't be a railroad job.

The door to Astrometrics was closed. Paris watched his people and found himself wondering if they shouldn't have gotten something to eat or done something else to pass the time. There wasn't much to do in this hallway other than wait and stew.

The door surprised him by opening a few moments later. Tuvok stepped out and observed the four of them bloodlessly. He nodded once.

"Good morning," he said courteously. "Astrometrics is yours, Lieutenant Paris."

Tom nodded back. He let his face fall into the cool convict's lack of expression. He didn't want to give the Vulcan a centimeter. "That was quick, Commander," he said.

"I do not require significant updates from Starfleet Command," Tuvok noted. "The questions in this case are long settled. The legal database on _Voyager _is sufficient for my needs."

_A little Vulcan psych-out, eh? _Paris thought. Two could play at that game. "I suppose," Paris said. "I'm a little surprised, though. I never would have thought a Vulcan would think discrimination is logical."

If his crack had gotten to the Vulcan, it didn't show. Tuvok had always been impassive that way; it was one of the reasons some of the junior crew called him the Great Stone Face.

"For one thing, Mr. Paris," Tuvok replied, "this is not a question of my personal beliefs, but rather a duty I have been assigned by the captain. For another, this is neither the place nor the time. I shall marshal my arguments at the hearing, and I recommend you do the same."

He stepped past them regally, entering the turbolift without a word. Paris grinned. He _had _gotten under the Vulcan's skin, after all.

He stepped into Astrometrics to find B'Elanna standing at a console. He stopped. Their last meeting hadn't gone so well. She eyed him coolly, not giving an inch.

"Hi," Tom said. "Glad to see you on your feet."

"I'm doing much better," B'Elanna said tightly. "So...I understand you're going to contact Earth."

"That's right," Tom said. "Look, I want to talk to you. Once I get finished with this."

B'Elanna glanced over his shoulder at something. Momentary confusion played over her face. Tom turned. Kessel was standing by Kim, whispering something to him. He answered back quietly and glanced at them quizzically.

"All right," she said, still a little cool and reserved. "What are you going to do?"

"Explain things," he said. "I just...you have to hear me out. It's complicated."

She chuckled. "No, I mean what are you going to do with the datalink to Earth."

"Oh." Harry stepped forward and smoothly handed B'Elanna a PADD.

"We need to run these queries," Harry said. She nodded and fed the data into the computer.

"Any comms?" B'Elanna asked.

"Yep," Tom said, feeling his tensions lessen. Something had loosened B'Elanna up. That was a good thing; one less thing to worry about. "Kessel's family."

B'Elanna raised an eyebrow. "It's your comm time," she said.

"I know what I'm doing," Tom said. Kessel stepped forward timidly and tapped something out on the console, and then stepped back. B'Elanna tilted her head and watched her. At first, she seemed hostile and distrusting. Then, she seemed to relax a little and seemed thoughtful. Tom glanced back over his shoulder and saw Kessel was standing next to Kim, clearly drawing some sort of comfort from that. It took him a moment to realize it. B'Elanna had accused him of having an affair with Kessel. Now, here she was, clearly preferring Harry's company. It didn't bother Tom a bit – actually, it made his job easier.

It took a moment for the comm call to go through. Static ruled the screen for several seconds. Then it flickered and formed into the figure of a man. B'Elanna left Astrometrics, muttering that she would be monitoring from outside. That was fine; they'd have their privacy. Tom glanced up at the man who had brought Augments back to the universe.

Erika Kessel did not look particularly German, in Tom Paris's humble opinion. Then again, that only made sense; she had been adopted, more or less. Heinrich Kessel did. He was old, with a thin, sharp-featured face. His hair had gone silver and thinned at the temples. Bright blue eyes stared back at him, and the whites of his eyes were interrupted by snaps of veins. Tom thought that he could have stuck him in a Captain Proton serial as a scientist very easily.

He sat in a mobility chair, but Tom guessed Dr. Kessel was about as tall as he was. He smiled at his daughter and nodded once, the picture of reserve.

"_Guten Morgen," _he said.

Tom motioned for Kessel to come up. She complied. He leaned over to her and spoke quietly.

"You can have a couple of minutes with your family," he said, "but don't get too into it. Explain to them what they need to know, and then I want to interview them."

"Yes, sir," Kessel said, her eyes locked on the screen. Tom could see the emotion on her face. She blinked for a moment, then launched into a flood of tear-choked German. He reached for his combadge and flicked off his translator. There didn't seem to be any particular reason, other than the simple courtesy of privacy.

They spoke back and forth for several minutes. A pretty brunette who he assumed to be Kessel's mother entered the screen and a brisk trot, and she jumped into the conversation. He couldn't follow any of it and didn't bother trying.

Erika Kessel stopped suddenly and took a breath. "_Es gibt einen Grund fuer diesen Anruf," _she said. "_Starfleet...hat mich...," _she stopped, and switched to English with conscious effort. "Starfleet has discovered what I am."

Neither parent seemed surprised. The woman glanced down at the floor momentarily and her face tightened. The man simply nodded once, his face not betraying anything.

"This is Lieutenant Paris," she said, pointing at him. "He is my defense counsel. He wanted to talk to you." Tom stepped forward and smiled.

"Good morning, Dr. Kessel," Tom said. "Uh...or is it Professor Kessel? Or Professor Doctor Kessel?" A tight smile of embarassment wreathed his face. Kessel's father was probably thinking that her defender was a complete idiot.

The older man smiled. "_Herr Professor Doktor Doktor Kessel, _if you vish to be formal," he said. Erika Kessel's German accent was faint, worn down to an occasional harshened consonant or differently pronounced vowel. It reminded him somewhat of Heidi Klum, a supermodel who, in Tom's knowledgeable opinion, was one of the better things about the 20th century. Her father's accent was much stronger.

"I have two degrees. You may call me Doktor Kessel, and I vill call you Lieutenant Paris. Is that fair?"

"Very," Paris said. "And are you a doctor too, Mrs. Kessel?"

The woman smiled pleasantly and answered with an exceedingly proper upper-crust British accent. "Yes, Lieutenant, we're both Dr. Kessel."

"I have a lot of ideas on how I'm going to defend this case," Tom said. "What I need to know from you two is your stories."

"Our stories?" Heinrich Kessel asked, and seemed amused. "I know what you want, Lieutenant. _Warum. _Why? That is vot you vant to know. Why Augments? Why would I risk my career – indeed, my freedom – for Augments?"

Paris swallowed, feeling like he was being tested and failing. "Well...to make a long story short, yes. From what she tells me, there was quite a conspiracy going on. Why?"

For some reason, he was expecting a diatribe. Something about the superiority of the Augments, or the necessity of science, or something like that. But Kessel _pere _still remained calm, sitting in his chair and observing Tom out of those lively blue eyes.

"May I ask you something?" the older man asked courteously.

"Sure," Paris said.

"My daughter tells me your vife is expecting," Dr. Kessel said.

"Yes," Paris said.

"Congratulations," the old doctor said. "How far along is she?"

"Thank you. She's thirty-two weeks along, but we don't know when it'll be time. She's half Klingon."

"_Ach so. _Yes, it's harder to tell with a hybrid mother and a hybrid child. Now. Did the doctor on your ship holoimage the baby for you? Have you seen it?"

"Yes," Tom said.

"Many times?"

"We went once a week, at least," Tom said. "Twice sometimes, if the doc had something to show us. B'Elanna would have gone every day if she could have."

"So," the older man said. "You saw your baby in the womb. You saw it grow."

"Yes," Tom said, smiling despite himself.

"You saw it take form, you saw its heart beat, and you saw its limbs grow. You saw it _live." _

"Yes, I did," Tom said. "But what does this have to do with anything?"

"Everything," Kessel said. "Your baby vas an embryo once. A living embryo. _Ist's nicht so?" _

"Yeah," Paris said. "_Das ist so." _

All of the Kessels seemed amused by his attempt at German. _Hardy har har, _Paris thought. If it got him some answers, all the better.

"In the datastreams from _Voyager, _there are reports of a race in the Delta Quadrant that stole organs," Kessel said, snapping his fingers for the name.

"Vidiians," Paris said. "I knew them well. Better than I would have liked, in fact."

"_Danke. _Tell me, Lieutenant Paris. Suppose a Vidiian ship attacks your ship tomorrow. Then they say they will leave everyone on board alive if only you and your wife give up your baby to them. You would be saving one hundred fifty lives at the cost of one. Would you do it?"

"Of course not," Paris said hotly.

"Why? Your baby isn't born yet. You can have another one," the older man pointed out.

_If B'Elanna could hear that, _Paris thought, _she'd break your arms and leave you for the Vidiians. Probably me, too, just to cover all bases. _ Dr. Kessel couldn't possibly know that B'Elanna was just outside, but _he _knew.

"It's only a few weeks off," Paris said.

"All right. Imagine it happened when your wife was only a few weeks along. Would you do it then? It was just an embryo."

He swallowed. "No," Paris said.

"Aha!" the older man stabbed at the air with a thin, bony finger. "Because it was alive even then."

"Yes, of course," Paris said. "But--,"

"No buts," Kessel overrode him. "Don't you see? An embryo is alive."

"Yes," Tom said.

The old man leaned forward in his mobility chair. "Imagine I put you in a prison cell," he said. Paris wondered if Dr. Kessel knew about his past. Didn't everybody? "Imagine I did not give you food or water. I just sat there and watched you waste away. That would be murder, wouldn't it?"

"Of course," Paris said.

"It is _no different _with embryos. Augment embryos, human embryos, any embryos! They were dying. They had been frozen for centuries. Their cells were breaking down. A decision had to be made. Either we bring them to life, or we murder them. These were lives! We cannot store them in the back of the freezer like...potatoes!" Dr. Kessel sat up straight in his chair, and his eyes burned at the three defenders of his daughter. His accent grew thicker, clotting his words. "That was the choice. We have the technology to make the choice easy. If a young girl gets pregnant and does not want her baby, we can transfer it into a woman who does want it. If there is no recipient, we can place it in an artificial womb and gestate it there. That technology is commonplace. It happens every day. We do that, Lieutenant Paris, because we are civilized people. Don't you see? Civilized people protect innocent life, and if embryos are not innocent life, then what is? If we refuse to do so...if we turn our backs and say, 'Oh, they are Augment embryos, we don't want to continue their lives, it vould be so much easier if they just went away'...then we are not civilized people. We're barbarians with warp technology." The old doctor shook his head. "My choice was clear. I chose to be civilized. Conspiracy? _So ein Quatsch. _There is no conspiracy, Lieutenant Paris. Only morality."

He took a deep breath and visibly calmed himself. "Whether or not we should make more Augments in a lab is...open to debate," he said. "What is not is that we cannot murder the ones who were already here."

_Boy oh boy, _Paris thought. _If there was a way I could get you here to testify, I wish I could. _

"Dr. Kessel, I assure you, I understand that. A hundred per cent. But it's not that simple. You had quite the conspiracy behind you. You faked her DNA, you arranged for her to get a sensor spoofer, and presumably the other ones got them too. That...kind of muddies the waters."

The old man nodded and tilted his head. "If Captain Janevay ordered you to commit genocide against a planet," he said, "would you do it?"

This college-professor question session was beginning to get to him. At least he knew where Erika Kessel had come by her somewhat stilted manner of talking. "No," he said.

"That would be an illegal order, then?"

"Of course. We're not obligated to obey illegal orders. But this is the _law,_ Dr. Kessel."

"Vhat if she wrote the order down?" Kessel continued, as if he had not heard. "If she wrote it down and signed it, would you obey it then?"

He could see where this was going. "Even a written order to fire on a species that hadn't harmed us wouldn't be valid, Dr. Kessel, but--,"

"Even if she wrote it in a law book?" Kessel pressed. "A nice big one, trimmed in leather? With the Starfleet logo printed on it? Surely then it would be all right?"

Paris sighed. The old biologist was certainly sure of himself. "Dr. Kessel, you're talking about murder. I'm talking about falsifying applications to Starfleet Academy, actively jamming DNA sensors...it's not so simple."

"Yes, it is," Dr. Kessel said dismissively. "An unjust law is no law at all. A law that says we cannot bring Augments to life is unjust. And a law that condemns my daughter to second-class citizenship because of the crimes of others of her kind is also unjust. It doesn't matter. I confess. I will take the blame."

Erika Kessel stepped forward and rattled off something in German to her father. His translator was still off, so he didn't catch it. He didn't need to: it was pretty obvious that Ensign Erika Kessel didn't like that idea one bit. Her father simply looked at her, smiled, and shook his head. His answer didn't seem to reassure her.

"Tell me how I can help," the elder Kessel said. "If my testimony will help, I will testify. _I _did it. I will take responsibility."

Paris sighed. "Nobody here wants to get you in trouble, Dr. Kessel."

"I thank you for that," the old man said. "But I knew this could happen. I have known ever since my daughter was born. If I must go to prison for following my conscience, so be it. I am not afraid."

_Damn, _Paris thought. He'd _been _to prison. Dr. Kessel might be a brilliant scientist, but Tom didn't know if he knew what he was getting into. Then again, there had been a few people like him in prison – captured Maquis, protestors of one stripe of another. They'd believed in their cause as fervently as Dr. Kessel believed in his.

Static fuzzed across the screen. Tom felt his gut tighten. "Dr. Kessel?"

The door opened and B'Elanna stuck her head in. "Sorry to interrupt, but we're losing the signal."

_Great, _Tom thought. All the same, he had what he'd come here for. He swallowed and looked at the parents nervously.

"Dr. Kessel...Drs Kessel, I guess. We're losing the signal, so I may have to cut this short. If I can reach you before the hearing, we'll see about testimony. I'm glad to have met you. And I'm going to do everything I can, along with my staff,--" He indicated Harry and Seven with a hand. "To try and get your daughter out of this, and to make sure people know why you did what you did. Thank you."

"_Bitte schoen. _And thank you, Lieutenant Par--," the old man replied, before the screen finally fuzzed into rushing static. B'Elanna stuck her head in again, her face twisted in anger.

"Dammit," she said. "I'm sorry, Tom. Signal's gone. I'll try to get it back." She handed Harry a PADD. "Here are your queries."

He glanced over at his client, who was staring at the screen with disappointment and pain inscribed across her face. Her hands were trembling. This had gone well for Tom, but he was not lost as to its emotional effects on his client. He leaned over to Harry.

"Look," he said. "I'd like to talk to B'Elanna for a moment...how about you try and take care of Kessel? We don't need her freaked out for the hearing. Just get her calmed down."

Harry nodded. "Sure," he said. "Last thing she needs to think is that her parents are going to jail over her. I'll get her straightened out. Maybe drop by the mess hall. I've got some replicator credits. Seven?"

Seven seemed somewhat uncomfortable. "I am willing to accompany you," she said, hedging, "but I am not sure my presence will be efficient."

"How so?" Tom asked.

Seven gestured with her chin at the shaking Augment. "Emotional support is not a skill I have mastered," she said.

On the one hand, Tom thought, it said something that Seven had even recognized that was what the problem was, and that she might not be good at it. On the other hand, she was right.

"Just try to be supportive," Harry broke in. "Follow my lead. You'll do okay."

"Very well," the Borg woman assented.

Harry walked over to Kessel and spoke softly to her. Whatever he said, she went along with him compliantly enough. Tom nodded slowly, grinning despite himself. Harry knew how to be supportive. That was one of his strong points.

He watched the three of them leave, waiting a few moments before he stepped out into the corridor. B'Elanna was there, glaring at the console as if she intended to attack it. She glanced over at him.

"Sorry," she said. "Looks like an ion cloud came along at just the right time and scattered the signal to hell and gone." She scowled at the console again.

"It's all right," Tom said. "I got what I needed."

"Did you?" B'Elanna parried.

"Yes," he said. "Did you catch any of it?"

B'Elanna gave him a look. Her expression was thoughtful. She seemed disturbed but not angry.

"Some of it," she said. "I wasn't snooping. I was trying to keep the signal clean."

"I know," Tom said gently.

"I...," she began, and stopped. "I still don't know why you're doing this," she said. "But...that guy was totally different than what I thought. I was thinking, you know, he was going to be this mad scientist or something...then he starts talking about our baby." One hand flitted to her bulging abdomen. "I never thought of it like that."

"That's the problem," he said. "Nobody thought of it like that."

He knew better than to make a big deal of it. B'Elanna didn't like to admit she was wrong. Crowing would get her mad. Besides, there wasn't any point. She was already thinking about it, which was what he wanted. She also knew what it was like to be discriminated against. Now, if only he could duplicate this at the hearing, he'd be set.

"Besides," she said, and smiled wanly. "I thought she was making a play for you."

"She's not," he assured her.

"I can see that. She's into Harry."

Tom chuckled. "You think?"

She stared at him wryly, seeming more like the old B'Elanna. "Can't you _tell? " _

"I was afraid it might be wishful thinking," he deadpanned.

"Well, it's not. She's interested in him. I don't see how you can miss it."

Tom chuckled.

"Well," she continued, "I still don't understand why you've got such a bee in your bonnet about this...but all right. Good luck."

That was about as much of an apology as he was going to get, but it would do. He felt better, actually. There was still a lot to do. All the same, he had a lot to work with. There was a ton of anti-discrimination law in the database. He was pretty confident that Harry and Seven would pull something together. At least he had a free hand if Kessel's parents had to come into it. On the whole, Tom thought, Dr. Kessel's testimony would help a lot more than hurt. It was easy to argue against the original scientists who had thought creating supermen would be a good idea; it was a heck of a lot harder to argue against a man who argued that civilized people protected innocent life. The old scientist had even gotten B'Elanna to rethink the issue. From long experience, Thomas Paris knew this was not easy.

As he went to join his people, Paris found himself feeling pretty confident.


	10. Past and Present

_Author's note: _

_Well, I'm not dead, just busy. I did decide to give Katharina-B her requested Chakotay scene, along with a viewpoint from everyone's favorite ex-Borg drone. _

Seven of Nine tilted her head and watched the two in front of her carefully. They were in the messhall, sharing it with only a few others. Presumably, Seven deduced, these crewmen worked nightshift and were eating their dinner.

The case of _Voyager's _unmasked Augment had interested Seven. Captain Janeway had reprimanded her for refusing to help the lone member of species 8472 who came aboard _Voyager. _Seven remembered that well: it was one of the few times she had honestly thought the captain to be an outright fool. Looking back, she had a better understanding now of what Janeway had been trying to convey.

_I realize it may be difficult for you to help save this creature's life, but part of becoming human is learning to have compassion for those who are suffering, even when they're your bitter enemies. ... A single act of compassion can put you in touch with your own humanity. _

Seven was conversant with human history, including the Eugenics Wars. Data of that stripe was easy to assimilate. All historical documentation she had found had indicated that the Augments were harsh and tyrannical, utterly convinced of their own superiority. Captain Archer's report of the Augment Crisis of 2154 and Captain Kirk's report of Khan's return both made it clear that humanity could have no common ground with their creations – bitter enemies, indeed, bitter as they came. She could have dismissed that as the attitudes of a bygone age, but the attitude still held sway. Upon the discovery of Kessel's true heritage, the very woman who had urged her to show compassion to the 8472 had set into play this hearing, which would deprive Kessel of her Starfleet commission. Where, then, was the compassion that Captain Janeway had asked of her?

There were other reasons. Seven's implants had given her abilities that other humans did not possess. She had an eidetic memory, and her physical strength was above human norm. She believed that this was part of why some of the crew still feared and distrusted her. What they did not realize while Seven's gifts were greater than those of her crewmates, her challenges were correspondingly more formidable. Social interaction was a source of great struggle and frustration for the Borg drone, while it seemed to come so naturally to everyone else. It seemed to her sometimes that this journey might never be over, that she might never reach the point of humanity.

The discovery that there was an Augment on the ship had interested her. There were parallels between their situations. Some of the other woman's genetic gifts corresponded to her own Borg-derived abilities. Kessel was not exactly like her, to be sure. She had been raised with humans. She had no experience of the Collective. Seven calculated that the Augment did not have the social difficulties that she herself did, although Kessel was quiet and reserved. Even so, Seven reasoned that even if the parallels were not exact, Kessel might have insights, thoughts and observations that Seven could use. At the least, she had been quite skilled at avoiding notice. This was an area where Seven knew she could improve. The skill would be useful to have in her repertoire.

The reasons she had given when she offered her assistance were true, too. Starfleet law banned the genetically enhanced from serving. Starfleet law also clearly gave Starfleet officers the right to take any means necessary to defend themselves against the Borg, including the right to destroy Borg ships and drones. She had been a Borg drone. She still had some Borg implants necessary for her survival. The conclusion was clear, if disconcerting: any Starfleet officer could disintegrate her and point to that general order as justification. On _Voyager, _she was confident that no one would do such a thing. Earth, however, was an unknown quantity. It was in her own interests to make sure humans were more perfect in their adherence to their principles.

Then, there was the simplest reason of all. According to the data Seven had consulted, Augments were twice as intelligent as the average human, five times as strong, and had many other improvements over their creators. If this was true, then to simply waste Kessel's abilities merely because of her origin was not merely inefficient. To Seven, who regarded efficiency in the same way that some other crewmembers regarded religion, the idea was akin to a war crime.

She was confident of her ability to contribute to the defense team. Accessing computers and finessing out data was one of her strong points. Starfleet legal codes were merely data stored in databases; she could sift those well. She was less confident of her ability to help in the current situation. Kessel was pale and shaking, staring off into space with a blank look that Seven had learned to connect with human emotional trauma. Ensign Kim was standing at the entry to the kitchen, obtaining coffee.

It was Ensign Kim, Seven recalled, who had reacted with similar frustration when his comm time with his own family had been cut short by a solar flare. That had given her the idea to seek a discussion with her aunt. She still did not completely understand the human preference for family, but she could accept it as given.

"Do not be alarmed," Seven said after spending a few moments digging for something to say.

Kessel turned her head slowly and looked at her. "My father just admitted what he'd done over subspace," she said, still sounding dazed.

"He made an eloquent case in defense of his actions," Seven pointed out.

The corner of Kessel's mouth twitched. "It's still illegal," she said. "They'll put him in prison anyway."

"Both his advanced age and his clear moral intent would weigh in favor of mitigation," Seven attempted. It did not seem to comfort the ensign. Seven shifted uncomfortably. Both Kessel's distress and her own inability to allay it was disconcerting.

She was grateful when Ensign Kim arrived. Kessel glanced at him for a long moment. Seven noticed that the Augment woman's pulse rate altered slightly when he sat down. He plonked three coffee mugs down on the table and pushed one towards each of them, taking the last for himself.

"There you are," he said. "I don't know how either of you take your coffee, but Neelix will bring over cream and sugar."

Seven stared down at the dark, glossy surface. She did not customarily drink coffee, although she had tried it at the captain's behest. Nonetheless, it seemed proper to drink with the others. The aroma was pleasant, but the taste was bitter as always.

"Better?" Kim asked with a pleasant smile.

Kessel shrugged and smiled wanly. "Yes," she said, staring down into the depths of the mug before taking another pull. Seven wondered if this was related to the 'comfort food' phenomenon she had observed among other members of the crew. Captain Janeway's preference for coffee was something she had observed. Seven found the taste disagreeable, but understood that the captain appreciated the caffeine in the beverage. Her implants mitigated the effect of caffeine. Did Kessel's genetic enhancements provide the same effect? Now seemed an inopportune time to ask.

"Look," Harry said. "It's gonna be okay."

"Okay?" Kessel said. "My parents are going to prison just for having me."

Harry shook his head. "You don't know that," he said. "Now look. I don't blame you. I'd be upset too. But we're going to get you through this. It's all going to be okay. People will see. They'll see that your dad did what he did because he believed in what he was doing. That's exactly what people need to hear. We know you're not a monster. Everyone else will, too. But you've got to be strong for right now. We've got to get you through this first, then we can worry about helping out with your family."

"What can we do from here?" Kessel asked, staring at him glassily.

"Whatever we can," Harry answered. "Look. I think we've got a good chance. There's a ton of anti-discrimination law, both for Starfleet and the Federation as a whole."

Here was a chance for Seven to add something. "There are thirty-seven separate laws and code sections forbidding discrimination based on origin," she said.

Harry glanced over at her.

"I apologize for interrupting," Seven said promptly, having learned that apologies served to cover social gaffes.

"Oh, that's okay," he said. "Besides, the last cases that came up were all at least a century old. Things have changed a lot. Tom's game plan is to hit on those laws. Those come a lot closer to Federation ideals than the ban does. It's gonna be okay. We're gonna get you through this. Believe it." He reached over and patted her hand calmly.

Seven observed the ensigns carefully. Kessel did not seem to be convinced. All the same, she seemed to draw comfort from something. Ensign Kim had said little that Kessel could not already have known. Most likely, Seven deduced, the source of comfort was Ensign Kim himself. She could understand why; they had similar interests and a similar intellectual bent. Nonetheless, their time had to be devoted to constructing a legal defense.

On the other hand, she had to admit, it was efficient.

* * *

Now came the part that worried him.

Tom Paris was good with people. He'd always had the gift of gab. Conversation always came easily to him. His ability to talk with anybody was something he'd always prized. That was going to be necessary in this trial; he had to be able to connect with the jury. On that, he was fairly confident.

But he had to have something to tell them. That meant research. Book work. That sort of thing didn't appeal to him too much, and he knew it wasn't a strength. Harry and Seven would be a great help there. Harry was a bookworm, and Seven had spent twenty years hooked into a computer by her eyeballs. All the same, he'd have to digest it and form it into a workable defense.

He wasn't looking forward to this part.

Reconciling with B'Elanna was a big weight off his mind. Part of him had known she would come around sooner or later, but sooner was _much _better than later. Her anger had been understandable, but a little disappointing. Even so, it was one less thing to worry about.

He knew he had to wait until Harry and Seven gave him the ore they'd mined for him to refine into a defense. All the same, he felt full of nervous energy, raring to go. He wanted to get to work. They'd have to be ready to work late.

He was surprised to see the burly figure of the first officer enter the messhall. Chakotay worked this shift. Then again, some of Chakotay's duties took him off the bridge. Chakotay walked up to the counter and grabbed a mug, waiting for his coffee.

Tom sidled up to him. "Morning, commander," he said.

Chakotay gave him a pleasant smile. "Morning," he boomed. "So you're defending Kessel instead of flying the ship."

Tom nodded.

"I heard you gave the captain an earful," Chakotay added, smiling at Neelix as he filled the mug.

Tom shrugged. "I believe in what I'm doing," he said. "The Federation is built on inclusion, not exclusion." He found himself wondering what Chakotay would make of all this. He'd been a Maquis, but he'd hewed to the rules since coming aboard.

The first officer raised a warning hand. "Don't talk to me too much about the case," he cautioned.

Tom tilted his head. "How come?"

Chakotay observed him calmly for a few moments. Then he shrugged.

"There's a limit to what I can say," he said judiciously. "I'm on the council. I may be serving as its foreman. I don't know. These laws are so old, it's hard to say. I can't talk about the case."

"I know," Tom said. "But what about generalities? You can talk to me about generalities, can't you?"

Chakotay chuckled. "Quite the attorney," he quipped. "By now, I think I'm pretty well known on the ship. A lot of people know where I stand on discrimination. I stood up for my people on Trebus, even if I disagreed with a lot of their traditions. I stood up for my Maquis, both before and after we came here to _Voyager. _But I didn't _always _stand up for them – only if I felt they were right."

"Well, yeah, everyone knows that," Tom said. "But this is different. This isn't even somebody who got genetically enhanced as a kid. She was born that way. She never _asked _for it."

The first officer smiled and wagged a warning finger at him. "I told you, I can't talk about the case," he said.

Tom grinned guiltily. "Sorry."

Chakotay glanced over at where his little bunch was sitting. Harry was talking with her about something. Kessel seemed to be interested if a little pained.

"Looks like Harry's chatting her up," Chakotay observed easily.

"She just got off the comm with her father," Tom said. "It's...a little rough." Dr. Kessel had zero problem in admitting what he had done. Tom didn't think it was the wisest decision. Sometimes discretion was called for.

"I suppose so," Chakotay agreed. "You know, about your friend Harry...,"

"Harry?" He'd been expecting to see what Chakotay thought about Kessel. Harry was pretty much a known quantity.

"Yes," Chakotay said. "Tell me. What do you know about his ethnic background?"

The question seemed bizarre. Tom wondered what the first officer was driving at. "Um...well, he's Asian."

Chakotay nodded. "Yes, but Asian what? Korean? Japanese? Chinese?"

Tom gave Chakotay an askance look. "I don't know," he said judiciously.

Chakotay returned the askance look. "You don't know?" he asked. "He's been your best friend for seven years now and you don't even know his ethnic ancestry?" He sounded shocked, as if the first thing they should have done was to exchange family trees.

"No," Tom said, feeling frustrated. "I never had a reason to ask. He never volunteered. It just...it wasn't anything big, it's just that neither of us mentioned it. It wasn't important."

Chakotay chuckled. "Exactly," he said. "It _isn't _important. Not now. It used to be, though. Where is he from again? South Carolina?"

"Yes," Tom said, wondering where Chakotay was going with all this. "Charleston."

"Mmmm." Chakotay took a pull at his mug. "There was a time when Harry's race would have meant quite a lot, you know. In fact, it wasn't too long before the project that resulted in the Augments started off."

Tom shrugged. "Really?"

"Yep," Chakotay said. "In the late 19th century, the United States restricted immigration. There were laws that excluded Chinese people specifically, and there were other laws that banned Asians in general. There was one Supreme Court case that decided an Indian fellow couldn't become an American citizen just because he was from India, and they were barred by law – that was in the twenties. It wasn't until 1943 that Asians could become American citizens. The Augment project started off in the late sixties, early seventies, I think – not that long after. So, time was, Harry's ethnic background would have been _very _important once. So important, in fact, that it would have determined whether or not his parents could have _gone _to South Carolina to have him. But now it isn't even important enough to mention between two friends. Funny, isn't it?"

Tom blinked. Chakotay knew this stuff pretty well. His knowledge of the twentieth century mostly extended to cars, sci-fi movies, and rock and roll. "Yeah, but Harry's not the one in trouble," he said.

"True, but I can't talk to you about Kessel's case," Chakotay said. "I'm talking about Harry. But think about it. His ethnic background isn't important now. But at one time, it was hugely important. I guess we've grown as a species since then. Funny how that works, isn't it?"

Tom chuckled himself and felt better. He wasn't _that _dense, and he saw the point.

"Yeah," he said. "Funny how that works."

Chakotay paused, clearly mulling over whatever he was about to say.

"I guess you've done a little growing yourself," he said after a moment. "I was...a little surprised you took this on."

Tom sighed. He'd been expecting this, in a way. He'd been a completely different person when he first came aboard _Voyager. _He'd hoped that people might come to trust him, and he'd worked hard for that – but sometimes it always came back to smack him in the face.

"Like I said," he said slowly, "I believe in what I'm doing."

Chakotay waved as if to push away any offense. "Don't get me wrong, Lieutenant. You've worked hard to turn yourself around. I know that. And I think you do believe in what you're doing, and that says a lot. Even the fact that you've stuck up for somebody else says a lot. But legal work isn't anything like flying a ship."

That was exactly what he'd been thinking about. He squirmed a little, sensitive to the implied criticism. He wasn't just a thrill-seeking flyboy. Or if he was, then maybe it was time he became something more.  
"I know book work isn't my strong point," he said. "But I've got Harry and Seven to back me up on that. It's not just research, either. We have to make a message out of all that. That's my job."

"Oh, I know," Chakotay said mildly. "I'm not trying to insult you, Tom. I think it's great. Says you've grown. I just want you to know what you're getting into."

"I know," Tom said grimly.

"You'll do fine. I'm looking forward to seeing what defense you present." Chakotay seemed uncomfortable. "Really. I need to get some reports from the department heads. Personally, I wish you the best of luck, and I know you'll give it your best."

It sounded rather like stale platitudes, but Tom suspected that Chakotay genuinely meant the good wishes. But before success or failure came a lot of hard work. Harry and Seven had identified the relevant laws they'd need. They'd have to keep at that for a while. He wanted everything he could have. They'd have to hammer that out, and then figure out what strategies Tuvok was likely to try and figure out counters.

"I know what I'm getting into," he muttered at the first officer's departing back. "Believe me. I know."


	11. Strategy

_Author's note: _

_It's been a while on this fic, I know. It's been a crazy time for me in real life. (Good crazy, not bad crazy, but definitely busy crazy.) I'd been working on this chapter for some time off and on, as well as what will become the next chapter. Someone reviewed, got me thinking about this story, my muse was struck, and here we are._

It was late. Harry's quarters, serving as the headquarters of the defense team, was showing signs of wear. Normally, Harry kept it spic and span. No longer; the desk was covered with PADDs, pizza boxes, donuts, mugs of coffee, and cans of soda. The wall terminal displayed a neat list of points they intended to make. When it had started, it had been a tangled mess, but Seven could organize just about anything. She sat up ruler-straight by the screen, waiting for a chance to further organize the list.

"All right, " Harry said. "What points are we going to make in the opening statement?"

Tom grinned. Seven watched him archly, just waiting for him to make a mistake.

"First off," he began, "I'm going to point out that the Federation bars discrimination based on origin. Then I'll point out that Starfleet is dedicated to openness, inclusion, that sort of thing."

Seven eyed him archly. "Our legal defense should be more precise than 'that sort of thing'," she said critically.

Tom smiled but didn't respond. "Tuvok is going to bring up the Eugenics Wars," he continued.

"And you'll do what?" Harry prompted.

"Point out that they were four hundred years ago. Point out that regular, plain old humans have done a pretty bang-up job of starting wars all on our own. And I'm gonna do the Khan schtick."

Seven scowled. "The 'Khan schtick', as you call it, is a foolish and empty dramatic gesture."

Tom shook his head. "That's where you're wrong, Seven," he said. "It's dramatic, yes. But it's not empty. And if it works the way I hope it does, it'll make people think. And it will work. And when it does -- ah-ha!"

The former drone was unconvinced. "Ah-ha is not a strategy."

Tom leaned forward and grabbed another can of soda. He waved it at Seven. 'That, dear Seven, is where you are mistaken. That's _exactly _what I want. People are _expecting _to hear Kessel's defense out of me. They'll be expecting me to say anything at all to get her off the hook. But I'm not going to say it; I'm going to make someone _else_ do it for me. I know what I'm doing."

Seven paused. "It is still not a strategy," she insisted.

"Neither is a dry, boring recitation of Federation laws," Tom said. He waved a finger. "Sure I could stand up there and say, 'Look, Federation Law 532.2, Starfleet Code of Military Justice Section 247 dash a point one, section twelve, and Starfleet General Order 12 forbid discrimination.' But that's just gonna bore the council." He waved a hand excitedly. "We need to get people thinking with their hearts."

"Only Species 1478 possesses neural tissue in their chests. No species on _Voyager _does," Seven riposted. "You are consuming too much sugar and caffeine, and it is affecting your thinking. We should concentrate on the salient points of law."

"The law proscribes discrimination based on race, religion, species, or sexual orientation," Tom said. "It's a good start, but it's not enough. We need to make people think about their consciences. About our oath as Starfleet officers. About what we're dedicated to. That's what's going to get us over the edge."

Harry got a thoughtful look. "Actually," he said, "couldn't we try some of Starfleet's minority-protection policies? I mean, the Eugenics Wars were centuries ago, and the Augments lost. Starfleet has had a pretty forward policy towards integrating and protecting minorities. No offense." He had a somewhat pained look, as if he might offend the Augment sitting companionably next to him.

"None taken," Kessel said, and drank down her can of soda. Tom had noticed that she had a pretty good appetite, all things considered. Then again, all those extra abilities probably made extensive demands on her metabolism. Maybe that was something. _Ladies and gentlemen of the council, there are Augments among us. They're stronger than us and they're smarter than us. But if we control their supply of coffee, soda, and donuts, they will have no choice but to come to reasonable terms with us. _

"The problem is," Kessel continued, unaware of Tom's reverie, "is that minority-protection policies come into play when a _n__ew _planet wants to join the Federation. Usually there's a minority on that planet that has been historically discriminated against or disadvantaged. So the Federation will require the planet to enact a program under Federation monitoring for a few years, and _then_ let them join. Earth is a founding member of the Federation. It wouldn't work."

"Nope," Tom said. "I'm hoping Tuvok may fall into that trap, but he may be smart enough to avoid it. The Federation Charter specifically states: all member societies are equal, and all are expected to stick to the Federation guidelines. Earth is a member planet of the Federation. It _has _minority-protection laws. If it hasn't been following them, then it has to make things right just like any other member planet would."

"You're going to claim that _Earth _practices discrimination?" Harry asked, and chuckled. "Nobody ever said you didn't have guts."

Seven appeared thoughtful for once, instead of arguing. Actually, Tom thought, it was probably good that Seven had put his theories to the test. If an idea couldn't pass her initial attack, it wouldn't have survived a moment past Tuvok. Tom found himself wondering if Seven was thinking about anti-Borg discrimination as well as anti-Augment.

"How about we take a ten-minute break?" Tom said. "Head break, coffee refills, whatever."

"I possess replicator rations," Seven said promptly. She paused for a moment. "This round is on me."

He got the idea it had been a scripted response. Maybe Seven was using this as a miniature social lab. So what? Kessel had sprung for the last round, he'd gotten the one before that, and Harry had gotten the pizza. At least Seven was chipping in.

She walked to the replicator and ordered up a pot of coffee and a dozen donuts. Harry sat companionably down next to Kessel and the two shared a glance. For a moment Tom felt like breaking into laughter. Yes, as strange as this had been, it seemed he'd succeeded in at least getting these two to notice each other.

Kessel punched up something on her PADD and read for a moment. She smiled wanly and looked wistful.

"Something wrong?" Tom asked.

She shook her head. "When you made those queries to Earth," she said, "one of them was for K'Voch."

He closed his eyes for a moment and took the mug of coffee Seven had offered him. "Thanks," he said absently to the drone. "K'Voch...that was the Klingon scientist, right? The one who figured out the Augment embryos were breaking down?"

Kessel nodded. _"Das stimmt. _ That's him. He just published an article that was printed in a biology journal. It must've come back in the queries."

"He's still alive?"

"Still alive, and still working," Kessel affirmed. "He's been part of an archaeological dig on _Qo'nos. " _

"Can I see that?" The article didn't interest him too much, but he did want to see the Klingon who had started this whole thing off. She turned the PADD around so he could see it. He scrolled down the article to see if there were any pictures.

There were three pictures. One was the usual author picture in Federation scientific journals. It showed an older Klingon man, looking into the camera with the sort of look Tom found entirely appropriate for a Klingon scientist. His general mien looked intelligent and focused. He was neither scowling nor smiling, but intead quite serious. His eyes were bright and clear and stern. Tom thought he looked smarter than the average Klingon, maybe a little more willing to think about ethics, but he sure didn't look like he took any guff. It made Tom think of his own father and he had to force that thought away. No time for going down_ that _road, not now. K'Voch had given Erika Kessel and the other Augment embryos to her father; it was Tom Paris's job to keep her in Starfleet.

Below the picture of the Klingon scientist were two other pictures. One was of a Klingon skull with a nose hole that seemed larger than usual, and the biggest teeth he'd ever seen. Next to it was a picture he presumed to be the owner of the skull in life. _He _was scowling and baring those teeth as if threatening to bite whoever was taking the picture.

"Nice chompers," Harry said, also looking.

"Who's that? His lab assistant?" Tom asked.

"No," Kessel said. "That's what he found. The...uh...," she looked up. "_Schaedel. _Skull. Sorry."

Tom thought she was either tired or stressed or both; she usually didn't have problems in translation. She'd held up well, though. Unlike the others, he'd actually been a defendant. It was nerve-racking;after all, it was her career on the line, not his.

"Is that a Klingon skull?" Harry asked, leaning down to look at the article with more interest.

"A Klingon skull, yes. But not Klingons as we know them today. That's a skull from an ancestor species. A proto-Klingon, I guess. According to the article, they found some stone tools with it, and a few other bones, in a cave in a rural province." She pointed at the scowling, toothy Klingon. "That's a holodeck reproduction of what the proto-Klingon would have looked like. You might not find it that interesting, but for biologists, it's an exciting find."

Tom nodded. "I'm sure it is," he said.

And then it hit him.

Clear as day, but no one had ever seen it before. He felt his knees tremble and almost dropped his coffee mug. Kessel, Harry and Seven all stared at him with worried looks on their faces. He sat down on Harry's couch and put the mug down.

"Lieutenant Paris, are you all right?" asked Kessel.

Tom began to laugh. What an idiot he was! How could he not have seen it? But he had now.

"I'm fine," he said, shaking. "I'm just fine...and you're gonna be fine too, Kessel. Believe it. Wait a minute. Harry, do you have a tricorder?"

"Sure do," Harry said, and reached to get it. He passed it to Seven, who passed it to Kessel. Each person gave him a puzzled look as they handed the tricorder over like some odd game of hot potato. Kessel handed him the tricorder timidly, clearly wondering what the crazed human might want with it.

He ran a few scans and ran a few computer queries. _Voyager's _databases told him what he needed; he didn't even need contact with Earth. They told him what he wanted to know, and he grinned tightly. " He looked away, grabbed a donut, and brandished it at his staff and his client.

"No more caffeine for you," Harry said dubiously.

Tom looked at his best friend and laughed harder, feeling tears come to his eyes. His stomach hurt. But there it was!

"No more caffeine for _anyone,_" Tom said. "We can all get some sleep now. Big morning tomorrow. But we're gonna blow it out of the water."

Seven gave him a puzzled look, then glanced over at Kessel. Kessel simply shrugged at the drone.

"That's it," Tom avowed. "Oh, that's _it. _Tuvok won't win. He _can't _win. Not only do they have to let you stay in Starfleet, but when we get back to Earth, you could make Earth give you your own island, if you wanted to. We've got it. We've got it _licked. _This is going to be open and shut."

"Your enthusiasm is good," Seven said, "but I do not understand why you suddenly feel victory is ours. The hearing has not taken place."

Tom grinned at her. "You really want me to tell you?"

"Of course," Seven said.

Tom grinned again, and then he did.


End file.
